
Copyright If 



COPYRIGHT DEPOSrT. 



The Philosophy of 
Painting 

A Study of the Development of the Art 
from Prehistoric to Modern Times 



By 

Dr. Ralcy Husted Bell 

Author of 
The Worth of Words," "The Changing Values of English 
Speech," "Words of the Wood," "The Religion of Beauty," 
"Taormina," "Art-Talks with Ranger," etc. 



" / have multiplied visions, and used similitudes," 



G. P. Putnam's Sons 

New York and London 

Gbe "ffmicfeerbocfeet {press 

1916 



3> 



Copyright, 1916 

BY 

RALCY HUSTED BELL 




MAR -4 1916 

Ube ftntcfeerbocfeer press, "flew H?orh 

©CU427136 



A MONSIEUR 

McDOUGALL HAWKES, 

PRESIDENT 

DU Musee d'Art Franqais 

ET DE 

l'Institut Francais aux Etats-Unis, 

AVEC 

l'hommage de son collegue, 
l'auteur. 



PREFACE 

PAINTINGS have been catalogued to death. 
There are enough histories of painting, such 
as they are; and as for dissertation and criticism, 
there is no end. It might seem presumptuous, 
therefore, to write anything further on a subject 
that has received so much attention from authors 
and scribblers alike. Perhaps it is. At all events, 
it has been done, and here it is. A long-winded 
apology could make it no better; and explanations 
would not excuse its defects. If it has any merits, 
they will take care of themselves. 

With deference to a polite and tottering old 
custom, the author announces his purposes in 
writing the book: They were, first, to sketch the 
course and progress of the art in an easy perspec- 
tive; second, to assemble some scattered material 
which is interesting and convenient to have in 
small compass; third, to give some results of his 
own reasoning, and playfully, as it were, to fly 
the kite of speculation from more or less solid 
ground ; fourth, to hit some absurdities which have 
long been shameless bores ; fifth, to correlate some 
relationships which reveal a tendency strong 
enough to be called a spirit; and sixth, to suggest 



vi Preface 

some theories which may be proved or disproved 
by more competent students. A half-dozen rea- 
sons, it must be conceded, are sufficient for the 
perpetration of anything except a crime. 

The names of many worthy painters have been 
omitted ; and very little reference has been made to 
the particular works of any. The scope of the 
book is broad, but its method is brief; and its 
nature does not demand a bibliographic list. 

R. H. B. 

New York, January, 1916. 



CONTENTS 



Preface 

CHAPTER 

I. — Art 



PAGE 
V 

I 

6 
21 

33 
38 



II. — Painting 

III. — A Theory of Painting 

IV. — The Origin of Painting 

V. — Prehistoric Painting 

VI. — Early Painting, i. — Egyptian . 47 

VII. — Early Painting. 2. — Etruscan . 58 

VIII. — Early Painting. 3. — Greek . 61 

IX. — The Roman Period . . .108 

X. — Early Christian Painting . .111 

XI.— The Gothic 116 

XII. — Italian Masters, Renaissance . 123 

XIII. — Painting in the North . . 136 

XIV. — Cis-Rhinish Painting . . . 146 

XV. — Painting in France . . .154 



viii Contents 

CHAPTER PACE 

XVI. — Painting in Spain . . .160 

XVII. — Landscape Painting . . .164 

XVIII. — TONALISM AND TONALISTS . . 1 76 

XIX. — Modern Painting . . . .185 

XX. — The Secret of Stained Glass . 195 

XXI. — The Secret of the Old Masters 200 

XXII. — Ideals 213 

Index 231 



The Philosophy of Painting 



The Philosophy of Painting 



CHAPTER I 



ART 



ART and Nature are imperial terms; they divide 
the world into two parts. Like other 
imperial things they are not well defined, — the 
dividing-line between them is uncertain, unless 
we accept as true that Nature builds from within 
outward, principally by a process of division; and 
that Art assembles, or builds from without, largely 
by a process of addition, in which, however, there 
is often a synthetic element. Even so, this is the 
merest text of the matter. 

Man is conscious of a series of nicely adjusted 
phenomena which take place and interact, so far 
as he can determine, without any regard to himself. 
This series of phenomena, of which his being is 
part but of no special importance, he calls Nature. 

He is conscious of another series of phenomena 

which take place with peculiar reference to himself. 

In this he observes interaction at a minimum, 

and reaction upon himself at a maximum. This 

i 



2 Painting 

series of phenomena he calls Art. He finds him- 
self in a new world where his importance has 
become demiurgic. He has achieved a tremendous 
social triumph. He has created something either 
directly or indirectly as an agent or means. The 
evolution of his soul has brought forth what seems 
to be organic relationships between him and his 
environment ; and these relationships work like an 
intelligent machine minting the precious currency 
of his emotions into a medium necessary not only 
to his spiritual well-being but for his further 
development. 

Man studies the phenomena called Nature. 
In various ways and by a multitude of means he 
makes his inquiries. The only answers which he 
has ever had to his questions have been his own 
interpretations of the phenomena that he has 
studied. For example, his symbolic interpreta- 
tions or equations of relationships, such as those 
which exist between numbers, masses, curves, 
series, densities, velocities, extensions or durations, 
and harmonies in space, he calls mathematics. 
This interpretation, having no emotive factor 
ordinarily apprehensible, is termed pure science. 

We interpret the relationships existing between 
sounds. We assemble sonorous affinities under 
the sway of harmony; we arrange opposing ele- 
ments of discord for purposes of contrast and 
balance according to a physiological requirement 
of being, — in a word, we marshal the relationships 
of sound and silence, as it were: of range, pitch, 



Art 3 

pause, repetition, flow, and quality, so cleverly, and 
we interpret them so accurately with the mechan- 
ical assistance of our own organs and of instru- 
ments of our own make, that the result first 
startles the emotions, then quickly sublimates 
consciousness itself. This subtle and inscrutable 
miracle — this mystery of waves at play on un- 
known shores — relatively so young in creation and 
yet so intimately bound up in the very heart and 
core of primitive consciousness, is called music. 
In music there are powerful emotive factors; 
therefore we call it Art. 

Man studies the drama of light and air. He 
apprehends some of the relationships existing 
between tinted shadows called colours in the solar 
spectrum; he sounds the deeper pools of shadow 
into which these spectral shadows flow on either 
side like living streams; he studies form and dis- 
covers laws of proportion; he becomes aware of 
harmony dressed in gay robes or vaguely mellow, 
and mysterious as the spirit of peace brooding 
over a still sleeping world. He interprets the 
things he sees and the world he feels. He takes 
a handful of clay and models it into a dream or a 
hope. He chisels delight or despair from a block 
of stone. With a piece of coal he throws the il- 
lusion of three dimensions into the space of two. 
With coloured earths and stains he imitates, 
emphasizes, subtracts, and adds. He has idealized 
something. His emotions enter the process, and 
he creates. With the meanest of means he has 



4 Painting 

performed another miracle. He has interpreted 
Nature, or another interpretation of Nature, in 
terms of his own soul. In this interpretation the 
emotive factor is dominant. We call his work 
Art. 

We are conscious of an element called beauty. 
Without pausing to consider how, we are aware 
that we have contributed something to this ele- 
ment, — and we rejoice in the shining fact. If we 
reflect, we perceive that things are beautiful by the 
relationship which they bear us. The most beauti- 
ful thing, in some delicate manner, is most closely 
related to human happiness, to content or satis- 
faction, to our dre^ams of love or to the aspira- 
tions of our hope. The next most beautiful thing, 
perhaps, is related closely to our intellectualized 
emotions which thrill with delight at the discovery 
of some new feeling associated with some age-old 
experience — some sleeping joy of the past awak- 
ened by suggestion — some dear ideal suspended 
like a twinkling star, prophetic in the heavens of 
our consciousness. And the next most beautiful 
thing, lowest in order, is related to the gratification 
of our senses made keen by longing or desire. 

Thus it would seem that Art is an emotive 
interpretation of environment, a social achieve- 
ment, a necessary link in the chain of spiritual 
evolution, a language of the emotions with organic 
suggestions which fulfil in a measure the functions 
of words and phrases in speech — a language as 
vague as sighs, as indefinite as a smile, as eloquent 



Art 5 

as a look, as unmistakable as tears and laughter — 
a language capable of various statement : incoher- 
ent, prosaic, poetic, and inspired or prophetic. 
Like a flowering vine it interweaves the conscious- 
ness of man with the surrounding phenomena; 
it beautifies his environment by chastening his 
vision ; it sweetens his hope by purifying his heart ; 
and it enlarges his spiritual world by stimulating 
the growth of his soul. In a word, Art sets fire 
to the imagination, and the flames are as wings. 
Thus the sense of being is transported from the 
meanest of surroundings to the most glorious of 
realms. Art creates stainless images, suggests 
harmony, and so inspires us with the melody of 
conduct that we call it morality. 



CHAPTER II 

PAINTING 

THE art of a people is the tangible expression 
of the spirit of a people; it bears witness of 
things hidden ; it palpitates with immortal longings, 
and, in some way, it seems to pass the flaming 
bounds of space and time. 

Art belongs to no clique, and it cannot be cor- 
nered. It is the living voice for ever clear above 
"the sounding jargon of the schools." It thrives 
wherever imagination rises above brute want. 
It has its beginnings in utilitarian avocations 
when the sprite of play thrills the finger-tips of 
the craftsman. Art is then in its concrete stage. 
As it develops, it becomes ideal and abstract in 
character and big with a spirit "that gems the 
starry girdle of the year." 

As a medium through which the emotions find 
expression, art expands and parallels the language 
of thought ; it takes on broad powers of statement ; 
it deals with the majesty of life, suggests the 
mystery of being, and thrills with every tender 
mood and noble impulse. It uses simple lines, as 
the letters of a word, with which to spell dignity; 

6 



Painting 7 

it indicates gaiety with dancing colours, and haunt- 
ing sadness with the sombre tones lurking where 
twilight almost kisses night. 

As love may be likened to the fragrance and 
beauty of blossoms smiling on the fringed edges 
of a plant rooted in the dark and unlovely soil of 
primordial necessity, so may art be likened to a 
flower springing from basic needs, and supported 
by the very earth which nourishes all sociologic 
growth. The beauty of this flower puts soul into 
the emotions, spirit into the consciousness of 
humanity. 

Man was emotional before he became rational; 
up to the present moment he remains far more 
emotional than he has ever grown to be rational. 
Art is almost purely emotive both in its expression 
and its reaction. Its end and aim are not given 
us to know, — possibly for the reason that it has 
neither end nor aim. If it has an end, the end 
must be infinitely remote. If it has an aim, its 
aim must be to give pleasure to the emotions; at 
least that must be its proximal purpose, — its 
more distal aim is veiled with some mystery 
related to the progress of the soul. With the 
Greeks, beauty was the aim of all the higher arts. 
In that "land of lost gods and godlike men," 
beauty was the broad avenue leading to the stately 
dome of pleasure. 

Life, regarded as a parent-stem, has thrown out 
many branches. Where or at what period these 
branches leave the main trunk no one knows; how 



8 Painting 

they are related to one another beneath the bark, 
no one has ever dared to guess. Is life itself 
merely a branch? We cannot say. Does life 
support mind, or mind create life? We do not 
know. Are all these strange phenomena the 
merest twigs of a tree that man, since self-con- 
sciousness first opened his eyes, has called God? 
We do not know, and probably never shall; but 
if this wisdom awaits us, it will only be after con- 
sciousness shall have passed through a million 
cycles called lives, and been sublimated by a 
million and one interims called deaths. 

Perhaps it is futile to wander so far afield. 
Emotion and reason, after all, may flow as one 
under the bark of the Tree. How can we tell when 
we are only vaguely conscious at best of a few 
small branches which are inextricably intertwined ! 
Still, for present purposes we must regard them 
as separate, and treat them as such. 

Let us assume that the art of painting is an 
emotional outlet which is appreciably self-creative 
possibly by subconscious suggestion; that it is 
governed by external form and colour which are 
transmuted into internal design and feeling; that 
it is subject to selective will in combination, and 
that it is influenced by the very material used in 
its technic; that these influences crystallize into 
canons which are ever in conflict with our aesthetic 
aspirations, and yet which are always striving, as 
it were, to serve our aesthetic requirements. 

This art, germinated in light, is emotive and 



Painting 9 

ornamental. Its highest mission may be to dis- 
cover the changeless spirit veiled by mutable forms 
for ever in flux and flow. Surely, it is neither a 
stupid missionary nor a wise schoolmaster, — 
since it has no direct lesson to teach and no pro- 
selyting to do; and yet it bears a message as does 
a symphony or a song; but no more than a lyric 
was it born to carry a burden. 

When painting tries to supplement history it 
assumes a heavy load, for it usually confuses fact 
with fiction, and it often obscures truth with 
fantasy ; when it essays portraiture, it is more than 
apt to caricature both body and soul, — which is 
a significant fact, for it points to heights still above 
the art. When it attempts to tell a story with a 
moral or to preach a sermon, it at once becomes 
absurd or drops into some of its late-primitive 
ideals. The decorative mural painting in fresco 
and other technic has achieved much, but it is 
still largely a field of promise. Still, painting 
persists, with no inconsiderable claim on art, in 
various illegitimate and uncongenial fields. 

Millenniums may yet pass before this art shall 
find itself engaged wholly with its own problems in 
its own proper province. For nothing save truth 
is more persistent than error; and the inertia of 
habit is slow to yield. As Burke says: "The 
march of the human mind is slow." Even thou- 
sands of years of nobly directed effort may fail to 
rid painting of the disturbing coteries of freaks 
piddling in the shallow pools of art. "The little 



io Painting 

foxes spoil the vines, " said Solomon; and someone 
else, I think it was Plutarch, observed that if you 
live with a lame man you will learn to limp. 
Such is human nature ; and after all, the art is not 
exalted so much by what is done as by that which 
it would do. 

Nevertheless, a thin and straggling line of 
genuine artists, intelligently seeking the real pro- 
vince of painting, has persevered through the 
centuries of record. The line has often been 
broken or obscured; yet it was always capable of 
re-forming and of re-emerging from the darkness, 
each time a little fitter for the trail leading to bigger 
and better things. 

"Labour is the price the gods have set upon 
everything excellent." Serious painters have al- 
ways laboured patiently for that dexterity, the 
function of which is the fine expression of an 
intellectual conception having emotive values 
capable of giving pleasure through the eye. In 
their apprenticeship they acquired command of 
the manipulation of line, mass, and colour; they 
learned how to interpret the laws of light (and 
shade) ; that is to say, how to see ; they achieved 
what Wordsworth called "the vision and the 
faculty divine"; and the most successful lyric 
painters discovered the knack of presenting just 
enough of the spirit of imitation to suggest a 
probability in the realm of possible nature. 

The artist-painter therefore has found it advis- 
able to seize upon some aspect of nature capable of 



Painting 1 1 

idealization without loss of semblance, or, may I 
say, capable of sustaining intensified semblance? 
He has been careful to utilize natural objects 
which lend themselves gracefully to the exactions 
of beauty, and through beauty to pleasure, without 
endangering the effect with the blemish of vacuity. 
If he uses objects of other arts, architectural for 
example, he makes them accessories to his own. 
Above all else, whatever he uses in nature, or in 
another art, he is careful to invest with an air of 
symbolism which is vital to his art. He avoids 
incoherency by the nice care which he bestows 
upon his symbolism. For if his symbolism is crude 
he introduces rawness into his work, — something 
parallel to slang in poetry; if his symbolism is 
arbitrary, it fails of meaning because the parts, 
like unknown hieroglyphics unable to sustain the 
continuous current of emotive expression, seem 
detached, inharmonious, and are therefore not 
understood; his work lacks "the living passion 
symbolled there." If his symbols are exotic and 
bizarre, they distract the attention and thus de- 
tract both from the pleasure of the eye and of the 
mind. At the same time, if his symbolism is over- 
realistic, or too exactly imitative, it becomes brutal 
or too cramped to convey a worthy conception or 
a deep emotion. 

The painter has on all sides, everywhere and at 
all times, the objects which he may assemble to 
represent some phase of life or nature well worth 
depicting. But that which he has within his own 



12 Painting 

soul is of incomparably greater importance to 
the success of his picture than everything put 
together on the outside. Since artistic vision is 
multiphased, the artistic sense within must choose, 
and judgment, a sentient crystal of experience, 
must arrange with the greatest care the external 
objects which he is to symbolize and to weave 
together logically with the variegated warp pecu- 
liar to his art. The only trouble with all this is 
that God made the countryside, so to speak, while 
the average painter only happened. Still there is 
hope in the thought that, as Cowper says, even 
"a fool must now and then be right by chance." 

It was thought by many at one time, and it is 
still believed by some, that almost anything is a 
paintable subject if the painter has sufficient 
mastery of technic, together with an engaging style. 
Nothing indeed in art is farther from the truth. 
No degree of technical skill can render a common- 
place subject unique, or a contemptible one great. 
"No treatment," says the author of Erewhon, 
"can make a repulsive subject less repulsive. It 
can make a trivial, or even a stupid, subject inter- 
esting; but a really bad flaw in a subject cannot be 
treated out." This is as true of painting as in 
letters. 

A similar truth applies to pictorial anatomy, 
commonly called composition. As the painter's 
poetic energy must find outlet through his palette 
and brush, he observes that structure is as neces- 
sary to his art as it is to poetry; that a disjointed 



Painting 13 

or gangling composition by no amount of technical 
nurture can ever be made to blossom into a fine 
picture. As well try to make Quasimodo assume 
the proportional graces of the Belvedere! In 
making a picture, one must always consider the 
end. Skill and labour spent on a faulty composi- 
tion are thrown away in proportion to the fault in 
structure. And yet the composition, important 
as it is, occupies a small elemental place compared 
with the soul of the picture. For no arrangement 
of faultless attire even on an anatomically perfect 
corpse — neither pencilling of eyebrow nor painting 
of cheek — can inspire it with that indefinable 
expression which emanates only from life. The 
life — the soul — of a picture must come from the 
maker of that picture; and that is the solitary 
reason why we call the master painter a creator. 

But neither will it suffice merely for the painter 
to put life into his work. Life manifests itself 
differently in different objects. Just as a pas- 
toral spirit is incongruous in a metropolitan scene, 
so may lively gaiety destroy the artistic value of 
a tragic picture. The very pose of a figure, if 
contrary to the spirit of a scene, may entirely ruin 
a painting so far as its aesthetic worth is concerned. 
Its very tone is eloquent or blatant, impressive or 
frivolous. No painter of even mediocre ability 
would think of scattering, for instance, the wool- 
pack or cumulus clouds over the sky of A Storm 
when the trees are bent and straining and the voice 
of the wind is almost audible. 



14 Painting 

This illustration, it is true, represents only the 
A B C'sof the art. An infinite number of degrees, 
subtle and elusive of words, rise above and ever 
beyond. They cannot be taught because they are 
inseparable attributes of genius. No one would 
think of trying to teach, let us say, "the sweet 
singer of Georgia" how to write a play equal to one 
of Shakespeare's, nor the "Arizonian 'poetess' of 
passion" how to compose a Lesbian Sapphic. 
Outside the advertisement of a "school of corre- 
spondence" such a thought would never arise. 

Painting is oftener compared with the art of 
writing than with any other. If the repetition 
may be risked again, it may be assumed that who- 
ever can write a letter can also write some sort of 
a book; that whoever can make the letter S can 
draw a serpent; and that whoever can daub can 
paint some sort of a picture; but, merely in itself, 
technical skill in writing is wholly incapable of 
producing fine literature; and, likewise, the technic 
of painting is only the means of expressing some- 
thing; at its higher levels that something is the 
result of clearer and subtler mental operations 
dependent upon emotional range not only but 
upon intellectual grasp of experimental fact. 
Many can use the language of art, but what some 
of them say "is only a tale told by an idiot, full 
of sound and fury, signifying nothing." 

The thought that has value above all else in 
painting is the thought that is pictorially possible 
not only, but which may be expressed better with 



Painting 15 

the technic of painting than by any other means. 
This is the kernel of the nut as we modern folk 
regard it, although we sometimes forget that we 
are still living in a very remote antiquity. 

Truth, as it concerns the painter, is the mastery 
of a series of relations existing in space; these 
relations embrace contour, form, colour, and posi- 
tion; we may call them objective. The sense of 
emphasis is a subjective trait that makes the 
artistic mastery of these relations possible. Then, 
the synthetic union of truth and beauty glorifies 
all these relationships into a harmony which sings 
a matin-song to the sleeping emotions, thus arous- 
ing the soul to intenser life or to a fuller sense of 
being. And until the painter effects this syn- 
thesis of truth and beauty, his many-sided art 
remains, on one side or another, imperfect. 

The development of painting as an art appears 
to be of an order rigidly logical and climactic to a 
degree equalled only in mathematics. A represen- 
tation of the relations of the first two dimensions 
proceeds primarily from accuracy of position and 
contour on a plane surface ; then it passes through 
subtle processes involving emphasis until it ex- 
tends to action or character. A representation of 
the third dimension brings into play delicate 
problems of illusion which vastly complicate the 
process. The expedients of linear and aerial 
perspective become necessary. Following the 
third comes one which may be called the aesthetic 
dimension. If this is not mastered, then the 



1 6 Painting 

mastery of the three primary dimensions is only 
tentatively artistic in that it is barren of the ideals 
of art, although it may be rich in mechanical 
grace and attractive in its geometric perfection. ; 

Having assumed, for convenience of discourse, 
other than the three primary dimensions as ne- 
cessary to the art of painting, it may be permis- 
sible to postulate emotional and purely intellectual 
dimensions. What seems to be overlapping, inter- 
weaving, and blending of relations between all 
these different dimensions, possible to the technic 
of painting, is really a climactic order, which in 
time may be reduced to a formula and denoted with 
symbols similarly to the writing of mathematical 
formulas. 

When the forms and colours of a painting bear 
to one another ordered relationships, an aesthetic 
element enters into the arrangement. When the 
arrangement is so ordered that the forms and col- 
ours combine into a whole while yet remaining 
distinct and in contrast, an added value is given 
to the pattern which usually enables it to address 
the emotions. 

1 Mere resemblance is not regarded as art, or, at 
least, when it is so regarded it is classified under 
the most prosaic and monotonous forms of art. 
The paradoxical aspect of the matter is that intensi- 
fied resemblance — the very essence of resemblance 
■ — is the most vital element in the higher and more 
poetic forms of painting. That is to say, resem- 
blance must be intensified with accent and emphasis 



Painting 17 

in order to express character and to reveal what 
is ordinarily called soul. 

The potential beauty of arrangement and pat- 
tern for pictorial composition everywhere existent 
is the source from which artistic inspiration is 
drawn. And the sole means of drawing this in- 
spiration is through the reciprocal emotional and 
intellectual powers. The artistic representation 
of space, and the filling of it with the harmon- 
ious relationships of colour and form, of lines, 
masses, and tones, supported by arrangement, 
unified by pattern, and convincing in a resem- 
blance which has been intensified by emphasis, all 
depend upon the mind, which must be able to see 
adequately, to feel sympathetically, and to execute 
efficiently. That is the art of painting in a nut- 
shell — and without it painting is no art. 

Naturally, technic plays an important part in 
artistic painting. Without the best technic art 
cannot rise to its highest levels. It is true that 
genius may achieve artistic effects of a high order 
with an inferior technic ; and it is also true that the 
mediocre cannot accomplish a work of pure art 
with the most refined technic; yet neither fact is 
any part of an argument for slighting the best and 
most efficient technic thus far evolved. 

It is possible, of course, for mediocre mentality, 
having facility in manual manipulation, to pro- 
duce by chance a work of art. There is always 
this difference, however, between the accidental 
good effects of the ungif ted and those of the gifted : 



1 8 Painting 

the mediocre cannot, or at least does not, profit 
by happy accidents; while his gifted brother, 
subject to the same fortuity, uses his happy 
accidents as steps to higher effects. Another 
very noticeable difference is in the ability of the 
gifted to utilize the work of others both in analytic 
and synthetic processes. As Emerson says, "in 
fact it is as difficult to appropriate the thoughts of 
others as it is to invent. " The accomplishments 
of predecessors are the building-materials already 
quarried and hewed for the hands of the genius; 
while with the ungifted such materials serve no 
other purposes than those of the copyist. 

At the dawn of the seventeenth century the 
modern art of painting had reached its complete 
evolution. Not that the art henceforth shall re- 
main static; but with that consummation the 
attitude of the painter toward nature changed; 
his conception had broadened to embrace the 
democratic aspects of the world; and he found 
himself the master of space in its interminable 
recessions. He had learned to orient his art with 
regard to the entirety of his environment rather 
than to direct his efforts, as previously, toward 
certain elective parts. Instead of his selective 
faculties becoming dulled they grew to be more 
keen, — more artistically acute. He recognized 
differences in position and in the lighting of objects, 
all which he treated as accidental rather than as 
inherent gradations of true artistic value. He 
apprehended the real universality of beauty, know- 



Painting 19 

ing that it was everywhere within reach if one but 
have the eye, the wisdom, and the patience to seek 
the vantage-point of vision. He no longer looked 
for beauty in the things that were merely pretty, 
but on the contrary he often surprised it in unsus- 
pected places. He knew at last that artistic 
painting is concerned primarily with things as they 
seem, and secondarily, if at all, with them as they 
are; that the artistic relations which combine 
things in beauty of form and which unite them with 
the magic of colour and which blend them with the 
witcheries of tone and which enchant them with all 
the subtle gradations of light and shade are more 
important to the pictorial effect than the reali- 
ties of the things themselves regarded separately. 
This he understood to be the secret of breadth, 
in endless variety, of our modern painting; and 
this secret was first given to the painters of our 
era by the incomparable Rembrandt. Thus it is 
that a masterpiece in painting as judged by our 
modern standards is like a magic mirror which 
reflects fact, form, and colour not so much by 
definite statement as by that "judicious unflnish" 
which transmutes a flat surface into open and 
airy space. 

As I have indicated, art is, among other things, 
an emotive statement. The Greeks made use of it 
at their best period to express beauty. On those 
grounds it has been criticized. That is no basis, 
however, for a criticism of Greek art. For if that 
art seems to rise above our present human ideals, — 



20 Painting 

if it seems to be detached from everyday existence, 
— the fault is in us and not in Greek art. When 
our civilization shall reach Hellenic heights, our 
ideals in art will also be to express beauty, and 
through beauty, by reaction, to arouse a keener 
feeling of pleasure in a nobler achievement. 

Torn as our civilization is by the savagery of 
war, — menaced as it is by soulless efficiency, — 
shocked as it is by a powerful, wanton people who 
are barbarous at heart but whose heads have worn 
royal crowns of light, — yet, in these early years 
of the twentieth century, there are millions of 
human beings who see clearly that an ugly motif 
has no birthright and no excuse for being, — noth- 
ing to recommend it to perpetuity in any field of 
aesthetics. Taste is no more inclined to admit 
disgusting subjects in art than in polite society. 
The drawing-room and the board rightly exclude 
nastiness however nicely presented. The civilized 
family circle has its well-known prohibitions. 
Painting should be, and indeed is, as careful of the 
sensible proprieties as is society or the fireside. 



CHAPTER III 

A THEORY OF PAINTING 1 

LIFE is a phenomenon and Art is one of its corol- 
laries. As is notably true of Time and Poetry, 
neither Art nor Life has ever been satisfactorily 
defined. Both are so obvious, however, that a 
definition is unnecessary. The relationship that 
exists between them is commonly acknowledged, 
but not always clearly perceived. 

There is a general agreement in the belief that 
the phenomena of Life are incidental to planetary 
change; and that Art is incidental to certain evo- 
lutionary phases of these phenomena. Perhaps 
if Art and Life are considered with relation to each 
other, our conceptions will broaden and our per- 
ception of them will become clearer even without 
the aid of definitions. 

It is possible that Art may be traced through 
its changing phases as far back as the flux of 
Life itself may be followed. Indeed, some of our 
most modern art exhibits a hairy kinship with pre- 
arboreal existence. But, as we prefer to enter 
Life's Sanctuary through the soul of the most 

1 Art-Talks with Ranger. 



22 Painting 

spiritual person rather than through the primitive 
cell, so also should we approach Art's Temple from 
the heights, and not from its primordial depths. 

For the purpose of spiritual orientation, man 
assumes that there is a God. If he would make 
measurements on a boundless prairie he must 
drive a peg somewhere. On a shoreless sea he must 
sight some star. Such are the assumptions of 
philosophy. 

We may assume, therefore, that Life moves 
horizontally through time, and that Art moves 
perpendicularly; that one leaves a linear trail — ■ 
the other, vertical signs. But we must not assume 
identity where there is only similarity, because the 
confusion of identity with similarity has been the 
basis of a world of trouble to human thought. 
Parallel lines, corollary phenomena, and similar 
phases have interfered more with the sequence of 
deduction and the logic of formulation than all 
the known lines of intersection and all the bal- 
ancing forces of opposing phenomena put together. 

Leaving out for the moment the many different 
kinds of art, and considering only painting, no 
difficulty is found in separating Art from Life. 
This is the first step in the formulating of a working 
hypothesis which shall not be too slippery to lead 
us toward that which we wish to approach. The 
next step is a pause. For it is as necessary to 
avoid a false lead as it is to follow a true one. 

A little thought, then, is soon followed by the 
conclusion that this particular art is not an expres- 



A Theory of Painting 23 

sion of life or character ; neither is it a guide to the 
intellect nor an exemplar of ethics. At most it is 
one of the many languages of Life. Yet it is only 
a language in so far as it is a medium through 
which emotion finds the comfort of expression, and 
the intellect a kind of loafing ease. 

The aesthetic feeling, of which this art is a 
symbol, is a phenomenon which proceeds as a 
branch from the tree of Life. Its leafage has 
changed many times through the long epoch of its 
existence ; and its buds have borne strange fruitage, 
as well they might, since they have passed through 
the vicissitudes of the various seasons of the soul. 
But the aesthetic longing — the feeling — the branch, 
however bare at times of leaf, or barren of fruit, 
or bizarre of blossom, never withered. Thus, 
what was artistic in one age and inartistic in 
another is of no vital importance. For this is 
the one aspect of Painting — and the only one — 
which is permanent and universal. 

So far as the mind, an imperfect instrument 
unsuited to many tasks, has penetrated the 
Mysteries, it has revealed to us that Life itself is 
of changeless function, and wholly outside the 
pale of evolution; and that only do the combina- 
tions change to which Life, in one way or another, 
is related and involved. 

Thus, that which directs the evolution of this 
art is precisely similar to, if not exactly identical 
with, that which governs both organic and rela- 
tional evolution. But the evolution of Painting 



24 Painting 

is very different from the aesthetic principle on 
which it depends — as different as the body is from 
its life, or as muscle is from mind. 

The art is something infinitely more than the 
painting of that which is paintable. For it must 
endow the paintable with emotions, as it were, 
that are common to all mankind — emotions that 
all men feel and know and live, and in some form 
or degree express. And the more richly it charges 
the canvas with these emotions, the higher it rises 
as an art; until, in the hands of a master, it reveals 
such subtle and noble qualities that if I were to 
personify the art of Painting, I should call it one 
of the blessed ambassadors of God charged to 
convey the greetings of Beauty to the wistful 
eye of man. 

The aesthetic element of Painting is as much out- 
side the phase of evolution as its parent, Life. 
From Apelles to Titian, from Titian to Inness, 
and from Inness back to the Aurignacian artists of 
the stone age of Europe, twenty or thirty thousand 
years ago, the soul of this art remains exactly the 
same: changeless, serene, and sane and great as a 
demiurgic god. And if all the painter breed were 
"killed off" today by some happy chance, and 
all their works destroyed tomorrow, and all record 
of their methods burned the day after, yet within 
a century or two the art would again be in flower. 

And the reason why this art could not be exter- 
minated, as many species have been, and as some 
so-called arts have been, is because it is a corollary 



A Theory of Painting 25 

to the phenomenon of Life — because its soul is 
continually vibrant to human consciousness: 
librating with longing — quivering with joy and 
hallowed with memory sweet or sad. 

The sensations born of experience, in the general 
run of mankind, are absorbed and dispersed in 
everyday cares and by the necessities of mainte- 
nance. The average person uses up his high moods 
in crossing the hollows of life. Sentiment har- 
nessed to business affairs is like a race-horse hitched 
to a plough : the spirit of speed must be transmuted 
into a pull — nervous mettle must go into muscle. 
But give the average person a holiday in a picture 
gallery, and his high moods come back in a meas- 
ure, just as the race-horse indulges in frolic bursts 
of speed when turned loose in a pasture. 

The artist-painter is the race-horse preserved 
from the plough for speed and speed alone, as it 
were. His moods are higher, his emotions stronger, 
and his intuitions deeper, and his facility of expres- 
sion suppler and all his desires of expression more 
imperative than those of the average run of men. 
Thus it is that he differs from the others of his 
ordinary fellows a little more or less in degree, but 
not at all in kind or substance. If it were other- 
wise, there would be neither incentive nor demand 
for his pictures. He would no sooner paint for a 
blind world than would the Beethovens compose 
symphonies for the stone-deaf. The mystery of 
his genius is no greater than the mystery of mood 
in the humblest folk. There is nothing more 



26 Painting 

miraculous in his inspiration than in the desire of 
the shepherd boy to blow music from hollow 
reeds. 

The painter thrills with the pastoral or other 
beauty of a scene, and strives to pass the thrill 
on to others by the means of his art ; the poet feels 
a like thrill and tries to pass it on in words, accord- 
ing to his art; the musician feels the same and 
attempts the similar in melody; the average man 
feels the same, sensations ; but instead of trying to 
pass them along to others, he feeds upon them, and 
thus lives moments that are dramatic or epic or 
lyric. 

That is to say, the temperament of one person 
inclines him so to apprehend the past in the present 
that he is conscious only of the past ; the tempera- 
ment of another tends to revel in dreams of the 
future to the exclusion of the conscious present; 
and of another to find his high moods in the 
sublimated exuberance of the present moment, 
being wholly oblivious to the past and the future. 

Now, when the painter's emotion is limited to 
the nascent joy of the moment his soul becomes, so 
to speak, a conscious point in time, synchronizing 
with the ever-fleeting present moment. Work 
done in this mood is called lyrical. He captures 
the transitory experience in such a way that it may 
arouse in others a similar mood. He takes an 
evanescent wraith of the moment and sends it on 
through other minds as a dancing sprite of the 
years. 



A Theory of Painting 27 

A good deal depends upon how he deals with the 
emotion : whether he sets it down on his canvas as 
ascending the curve of rhythm, or congeals it at 
the crest, or plasters it on the descending slope. 
If he indicates it as rising he will enable his work 
to arouse in sensitive souls a sensation similar to 
the vague dreams of wooing love. If he paints it 
at the crest, he imparts to it something of the 
supreme passion; but if he places the soul of his 
art's subtlety on the rhythm's downward curve, 
he must inevitably anticipate by some shadow of 
suggestion that mood which follows a dying joy. 
And nothing else in his art is so eloquent to the 
initiated as this placement of his emphasis. It is 
not only a standard with which to appreciate one 
phase of his character, but it also tells in some 
measure what his past has been; and it augurs 
spiritually somewhat of his future. And it does 
this because his conscious mind takes no part in the 
process. It is an act of his subconscious nature, 
and therefore true — true in the noblest sense, be- 
cause it is adjusted to all the facts and experiences 
of his being. 

The painting which best fixes the transitory 
moment is the most lyric in character. Twinkling 
leaves, swaying boughs, running water or dimpled 
pools, happy poise of cloud, graceful pose of kine, 
and just enough haze in the air to veil the distance 
with mystery, and just enough gold to tell the 
story of the sun — these, and such fugitive things, 
are the lyrics of the open world. They are the 



28 Painting 

coquetry of Nature — the perpetual delight and the 
persistent teasers of the landscapist. 

The very nature of Painting saves it from the 
usual defects of Poetry, its sister art. In lyric 
painting the emotion is either caught or missed. 
For pigments, unlike words, will not easily permit 
the high mood of the moment to degenerate into 
a moral, or to overflow into a reminiscence, or to 
rise into a formless and variegated cloud-bank of 
prophetic postulate. This is what trips up many 
a "Tonalist. " He wooes glaze, wins colour, and 
loses emotion. He courts scumble, wins softness, 
and loses his way homeward in swamps of mush 
and deserts of haze. His work is fated to be 
forgotten. 

There is a nervous quality in the lyric painting 
which stands for "two things: a personal element 
peculiar to the artist, and the sincerity of his 
feelings. This nervous quality, so often obscured 
by, and lost in, the methods of the Tonalist, can- 
not be simulated. The pen of the clever poet may 
render an affectation almost as convincing as a 
real emotion; but no amount of cleverness can 
accomplish this disguise with the brush of a painter. 

It follows, therefore, that the really successful 
painter must put down his emotions at their high 
tide regardless of everything else; such, for in- 
stance, as the fitness or congeniality of the times, 
the requirements of his age, the vogue of his 
colleagues, public taste, etc. He may safely trust 
to time for sympathy and a just valuation if his 



A Theory of Painting 29 

contemporaries fail him in appreciation. Besides, 
what more should any painter ask than the 
privilege of starving to death with a sublime faith 
in the future glory of his work ! 

In the painter's art, the secret of the lyric lies 
in emphasis. When the emphasis dances on the 
flashing stream of fleeting moments in such a way 
as to remain always in the present, we have the 
ideal lyric. But when the emphasis lingers in 
the past, the lyric qualities of the work live in the 
shadows, while the dramatic are uppermost in the 
highlights and strong in the half-tones. And 
the secret of emphasis lies in the artist's tempera- 
ment. In this relation, "artistic temperament " has 
real meaning. Thus the painter places his emphasis 
strictly according to his attitude toward Life at 
the moment when his work takes on squI — that is 
to say, when its smiling harmony is born of his 
intuition. This very relationship between Art and 
Life has led many a commentator far afield. 

In Painting, the lyric demands sincerity of feel- 
ing, and the dramatic, seriousness. There is no 
intermingling of comedy and tragedy in the drama 
of this art as in that of Literature. For no matter 
how men and times may differ as to what is serious 
in life, no one would ever think of mistaking the 
tragic elements of a painting, as expressed in tone 
and form, for the elements of comedy. It is true 
that many a picture has been intended as tragic, 
and was believed to be tragic by the painter, when 
it was merely grotesque or comic. Religious 



30 Painting 

pictures without end have been produced of this 
nature; but they never fooled the rational mind. 
They were always just as ridiculous to common- 
sense as they are at present. 

In Painting as in Literature, and more in Paint- 
ing than in Poetry, lyric qualities necessarily 
pervade the dramatic. The language of the two 
arts is not the same. For its efficiency in express- 
ing thought and feeling, one depends on the logic 
of sound-symbol — on the proper sequence of the 
flowing stimuli of words, phrases, pause, and stress. 
The other depends upon fixed relations carefully 
adjusted between lines, lights, masses, shadows, 
colours, tones, etc., and the relationship of oppo- 
sites, the balancing of which forms subtle emphasis 
in harmony, or the lack of balancing, a discord. 

Dramatic painting then may be highly lyrical 
so long as the emphasis is on the past ; and the epic 
may be lyrical so long as the accent is on the future. 
However, the epic qualities are less evident in 
Painting than in Poetry, where they are scarce 
enough. The cause of this difference appears to 
be inherent in the language of the two arts rather 
than in the nature of the two artists. Both 
painter and poet, at times, ride the crests of su- 
premely optimistic moods, from the heights of 
which destiny appears glorious against the splendid 
dawn which hopeful man in his imagination calls 
the Future. But faith in destiny is harder to 
express in the language of Painting than in the 
"paeans" of the poet. 



A Theory of Painting 31 

A few religious paintings have been mildly epic 
in character; some have been superb enough to 
arouse vague sensations of the supreme will. And 
a few — a very few — historic paintings have been 
great enough to awaken the sensation of a pre- 
destined future inexorably linked with a fated 
past. 

Perhaps the best epic painting that the world of 
Art has known was done during the pre-Alex- 
andrian period. And so far as may be surmised at 
this time, Timanthes of Cythnus imbued his 
Sacrifice of Iphigenia with supreme epic qualities. 
It would be difficult to conceive a greater majesty 
— a more imperial doom — than was shadowed in 
the epic grandeur of that picture which has come 
down to us only in fragmentary descriptions. 

The anthropomorphic conception of destiny was 
more favourable to the epic expression in Art 
perhaps than we are prone to think at this time. 
It is true that instead of the minor Greek divinities, 
and later "celestial personages," we have other 
arbiters of the future. These are no less imperious 
because far more reasonable. Behold the dreams 
of Feminism, the splendours of Eugenics, the 
promises of Evolution, and the wisdom of Prag- 
matism! But where are the prophets? 

Still, persons are living today who see a ges- 
tating divinity in our labouring race. Among such 
prospective, optimistic souls there must be artists 
whose high moods scan the future with the eye of 
faith. And out of the drama of yesterday and 



32 Painting 

the lyric of today, who shall say that Art will not 
weave with confidence her epic tapestries of to- 
morrow? Surely, the prophets of the soul must 
address us in the language of Painting even as in 
that of Poetry. 

The art of Painting is restless as wind and tide; 
it is ever agitated with endeavour, and pregnant 
with hope; it symbolizes something that is kin to 
Life — something, in itself, that is changeless; yet 
something that seems to have spiritual needs and 
aesthetic ideals — something that helps to reveal 
man to himself — something that illuminates his 
moods and sanctifies his work — and thus approves 
his struggles in the glorification of his aspirations 






CHAPTER IV 

THE ORIGIN OF PAINTING 

RECENT investigation has pushed the social 
life of man so far back into antiquity that it 
is futile to try to locate the origin of this art or 
to attempt to follow accurately its great cycles. 
There is an element in it that is kin to all the cen- 
turies in the sea. The geologist has found traces 
of man's very early artistic instinct; but these 
signs, like dim footprints in the sands, do not lead 
to the beginning. The unknown past has dropped 
its impenetrable veil; what is beyond the mists 
can only be surmised by the broadest of anthro- 
pological studies and by the cleverest of generaliza- 
tions founded on what is known as primitive art. 

As a branch of the art of ornamentation, painting 
is referred to in the fourteenth verse of the twenty- 
second chapter of Jeremiah: "ceiled with cedar, 
and painted with vermilion. " Jeremiah, however, 
was of yesterday when considered in relation with 
this ancient art. How long it took man to learn 
to "muse on Nature with a poet's eye" will never 
be known. 

Although the commencement of social phe- 

3 33 



34 Painting 

nomena will probably for ever remain in the shift- 
ing, uncertain realm of speculation, it may be 
reasonably assumed that the art of painting 
evolved from one of the branches into which prim- 
itive speech divided; that is to say, from writing. 
Even Egyptian painting which, comparatively 
speaking, nourished but yesterday, not only 
shows its kinship to writing but, thanks to the 
priestcraft! never progressed very far beyond the 
stage of hieroglyphic embellishment; for it was 
woven of weak and beggarly elements. 

It is likely that the earliest human speech was 
less lingual than manual, gestural, and guttural; 
that the medium of communication, at first, was 
one of signs, and later of signs and sounds; that 
the signs were made with limbs which were freest 
and easiest to use for such purposes, namely, the 
hands and arms; that the facial muscles spoke in 
terms of grimace; that gesture was supplemented 
by posture ; that movements of legs and head helped 
to make more intelligible those of the hands; and 
that guttural sounds or grunts made clearer the 
meaning of signs; that the tongue came into use 
first through the hiss ; and that as the economy of 
its employment became apparent to beings who 
were forced more or less continually to use their 
arms and legs in pursuit of food, as well as in de- 
fence and flight, the tongue was brought oftener 
into play until it became such a valuable organ of 
communication that speech was named after it and 
called language. Imitation must have been the 



The Origin of Painting 35 

key to this early speech; need must have fashioned 
the key and necessity taught its use. 

Drawing, an important element in the art of 
painting, may have emerged from the act of the 
primitive geniuses who first thought of scratching 
in the ground to convey information to one another 
about some wild beast whose most obvious attri- 
bute was the possession of claws, and whose most 
dreaded trait was the power to use them. For the 
rule is that utility shall precede art. It may be 
supposed, then, that the origin of drawing was in 
the crude signs which served a useful purpose; 
that they were traced in sand and soft earth, 
scratched on the bark of trees, on stones, bones, and 
skins. The next step might have been a filling in 
of the crude design with a smear of coloured earth. 
The star of the unconquered will had risen. 

Early in the same epoch of development the 
smearing of the body, the colouring of skeletons, 
and the daubing of leaky vessels to make them 
water-tight may have been further steps which 
led in the direction of painting as an aesthetic art. 

As language developed and split into branches, 
the usefulness of some signs diminished while the 
utility of others increased. The birth of the sym- 
bol must have occurred during this indefinite era. 
The idea of drawing had become fixed in the mind 
of man. The hand had learned to express ideas. 
Thus the partnership of brain and hand, whether 
formed by chance or fate, had received the sign 
manual of evolution. This partnership was indis- 



36 Painting 

pensable to human progress. And so, when cer- 
tain kinds of drawing no longer served a utilitarian 
need they turned to aesthetic necessity. For 
man's aesthetic nature, however crass, had begun 
to demand environal ornamentation as the next 
successive link to personal ornamentation which 
had been fashioned perhaps by sexual selection. 

Thus, "where the dead red leaves of the years 
lie rotten, " pictorial drawings probably came into 
definite being, first at the behest of utility, and, 
through successive stages, finally in answer to 
emotional craving. From ideographic drawings 
to pictorial painting was only a step in the art; 
but it was a step which no doubt covered a long 
period of time. Outlines smeared with coloured 
earths or other substances, such as gums and 
grease stained with vegetable and animal pigments, 
or the natural oxides of minerals, were the master- 
pieces of the earliest painters. Eventually came 
the refinements of light and shade, the dance of 
colours and the song of tone, the illusions of 
luminosity and perspective, and at last all the other 
problems which are engaging the attention of 
painters today. 

A very casual observer of social progress cannot 
fail to be impressed with the great length of time 
necessary to the development of an art. If, 
therefore, pictorial art was well established in a 
remote period, such as the stone age, the earlier 
forms of art must have appeared in an almost 
unthinkable antiquity. Moreover, when one re- 



The Origin of Painting 37 

fleets on the slow growth of any art and on the 
tedious changes which cause it to ebb and flow 
and pass away only to be reborn in after ages and 
to rise again crest-high through favourable condi- 
tions, one must assume that the history of social 
man on earth is, at best, only slightly apprehended 
by us of today, and that it can be seen for only 
a little way from our immediate shores. 



CHAPTER V 

PREHISTORIC PAINTING 

PAINTING, with several of its sisters, seems 
to have appeared and disappeared in very 
early times only to reappear among other peoples 
at distant places. The universality of the art would 
lead us to suspect this even if there were no other 
evidence. 

The instincts of the child suggest the instincts 
of the childhood of the race. The fact that all 
children like to "make pictures" is an indication 
that draughtsmanship was one of the earliest 
of games. The imitative faculty of man is doubt- 
less a factor in the origin of art. The first attempts 
at the drawing of animals and at portraiture, 
being an identical process, were crude outlines. 
When the enclosed space was filled in with dark 
earth or natural tar the silhouette was produced. 

One of the most astonishing discoveries of 
recent times was made in the caves of Altamira in 
northern Spain. Reputable archaeologists believe 
that a people known as Aurignacians produced the 
paintings found on the walls of these caves. The 
bold spirit, technical skill, and general excellence 
38 



Prehistoric Painting 39 

of the execution of these prehistoric works might 
well stagger the pride of some of our modern 
painters. If the painting was done, as it is 
believed, in the paleolithic age of Europe, it must 
be in the neighbourhood of thirty thousand years 
old. 

M. Emile Cartailhac and the Abbe Henri Breuil, 
in their illustrated and now famous book called 
La Caverne d' Altamira, contend that the Aurigna- 
cians were richly gifted with artistic feeling and 
that they were capable of admirable work; that 
they were clever draughtsmen who did excellent 
freehand imitation of nature, which they had 
learned to apprehend with true artistic vision; 
that they had a considerable knowledge of colours 
which they ground in mortars or on flat stones 
and which they mixed with bone-marrow and 
preserved in marrow-bones; that they used vari- 
coloured crayons ; and that they employed brushes 
in the laying on of pigments and in the blending of 
tones ; that they understood modelling and the use 
of the burin, or graving tool, as well as of the pal- 
ette; and that some of the colours which they 
certainly used were the natural oxides, yellow and 
red ochres, and the black oxide of manganese. 
The authors believe that the Aurignacian artists 
also understood ivory-carving, low relief-work in 
stone; and that they were able to represent the 
human figure as cleverly as they drew the forms 
of beasts. 

Many thousands of years have passed since the 



40 Painting 

bison roamed the region of the Pyrenees. Perhaps 
a hundred thousand years were necessary for the 
stalagmite formation to build the barrier-wall in 
the cave of Audoubert behind which Count 
Begouen discovered clay models of the male and 
female bison. As this wall had to be broken away 
to afford access to the gallery, and as it is highly 
probable that the paleolithic sculptor modelled 
only such animals as were familiar, and therefore 
contemporaneous with himself, it must be as- 
sumed that art, to reach the high development 
shown by these models, had a very early origin. 

If it is true, as someone has said, that human 
savages roamed the wildernesses of Europe for 
two hundred and fifty thousand years without 
sense enough to invent a syllable of speech, we 
must modify considerably our Scriptural notions 
of the antiquity of our race. The truth is that 
man is an old resident of the habitable world ; and 
the probability is that he has been doing inter- 
mittent work in art of a creditable kind during a 
very much longer period than we suspect. Pos- 
sibly there is no problem in the art of our time that 
has not been repeatedly solved in eras past. 

There is little doubt that prehistoric man had 
both time and energy for play. During the epoch 
of his pristine virility it is probable that his play- 
ful moods were dominant. And although Tragedy 
was the sage-femme who first held him in her arms 
and the constant companion who was last to close 
his eyes, Sorrow had not yet taken possession of his 



Prehistoric Painting 41 

soul. The spirit of play was his salvation, — the 
first Salvator Mundi. It laid its finger upon his 
crude utilitarian workmanship, and inspired it with 
an aesthetic joy. This same spirit of play turned 
work into craft and craft into art. It probably 
influenced the earliest development of music, 
poetry, and dancing. At all events, the effect of 
play on the origin of the graphic arts is recognized 
by students. And if we make all reasonable 
allowances for all the differences between contem- 
porary primitive groups and those of prehistoric 
times, this phenomenon still remains constant to 
both. 

A study of the art of Europe during the post- 
glacial period reveals many probabilities and not a 
few startling facts. There are relics of these 
early drawings which show that the artists of that 
time saw the objects in nature as adequately as 
the artists of today see them. It is evident, 
however, that the prehistoric artist could not por- 
tray as adequately as he saw, which is not strange 
when one considers his technic and tools. And 
contrary to a prevailing impression, it is more than 
likely that artists were not born as such in that 
dim and savage day any more than they are in 
this ; but that they were taught and that they were 
guided by standards which persisted long and 
were stubborn. 

One naturally wonders what must be the genesis 
of an art that had standards so long ago ! Another 
interesting fact is that the art of these earliest 



42 Painting 

known primitives is superior to, more spirited and 
more "modern" in a way, than nearly all the art 
of our contemporary primitive groups. Moreover, 
it is evident that there were the same differences 
between the earliest primitives as between the 
artists of later and historic times. 

The widely current and common notion that 
individuals of a primitive people show less diver- 
sity of talent, greater equality of gift, and more 
uniform characteristics and capabilities than do 
the individuals of more civilized groups, is prob- 
ably almost directly opposed to fact. It is likely 
that in very early primitive times there were 
greater relative differences between artists them- 
selves and between artists and laymen than there 
were at the best period of Greek art when civiliza- 
tion had reached its crest and apex on earth in 
historic times. 

It is reasonable to suppose, and many correlated 
facts justify the assumption, that the early pre- 
historic or primitive maker of implements at first 
was impelled by need ; and that later he was guided 
by intuition. That is to say, the earliest bludgeons, 
for example, were unadorned. They were picked 
up at random and discarded recklessly; only the 
most suitable were retained for further use. In 
time they were more carefully selected ; knots were 
smoothed; the handle-end was shaped according 
to need and polished by wear and eventually with 
forethought. At this time personal ownership 
had become well established. Then a stone was 



Prehistoric Painting 43 

attached to one end of the bludgeon with withes, 
thongs of hide or of sinew. In the course of 
time, the stone was fashioned to suit the purpose 
of its use : edges were chipped for cutting ; the poll 
was blunted for hammering, and so forth. Finally 
a metal axe took the place of the stone ; and when 
thongs were no longer needed to hold axe and helve 
together, the thongs were represented with 
scratches, grooves, inlay, or relief, and thus became 
a motif for decoration. 

This early form of the decoration of implements 
is autographed by the spirit of play ; and it records 
also the transitional stage of artisan becoming 
artist. When the makers began to play with their 
work, they had already hearkened to an inner voice 
that we call intuition. Something within them 
also cried for symmetry; the idea of balance began 
to germinate. As I have said, motifs were taken 
from the crossed withes and the twisted thong, 
and passed down the ages until their origin was 
lost through slow modification and mixed design. 

It is tolerably clear that ornamental art springs 
from two important sources: first, the material 
used develops the technic, and the technic orig- 
inates the motif. The motif persists ; it is trans- 
ferred to other material which in turn develops 
a totally different technic as, for example, from 
that of basketry to pottery and wood-carving; 
from the technic of rope-work to that of metal- 
work. The second source of this art may be 
traced to the play in which the workman shows 



44 Painting 

mastery over metier. Thus play develops aes- 
thetic values unconsciously and therefore creates 
without purpose. And it follows that styles of 
work differ according to the different ways of 
handling the same material in different parts 
of the world. The motor habits also differ notice- 
ably among different tribes and produce variation 
even in the manner in which the arrow is released 
from the bow. On the whole, however, purely 
geometrical designs in primitive art-work are 
found to be similar; this is true in the most 
widely separated regions, which indicates that 
technic is fundamental to motif and that design is 
governed by the material used. 

The same principle may be observed in the 
making and decorating of knife-blades; but it is 
most marked in the geometrical designs of basketry 
and of weaving. The nature of the material first 
guided the hands of the workman, and then gave 
the cue to the artist. Thus arose geometric 
design and various artistic motifs which in time 
were transferred from basketry and textile work 
to pottery, carving in wood, stone, and bone, and 
now and then wrought into metal. Broadly 
speaking, this is the process of evolution of one 
form of art, not by any means unrelated to the 
others. 

Painting, as I have intimated, found its inspira- 
tion in playful imitation. Pleasure was found in 
utilitarian work. This was a very early means of 
satisfying an aesthetic longing, or hunger of in- 



Prehistoric Painting 45 

tuition. From a purely utilitarian imitation — 
such as useful signs scratched on soft surfaces to 
convey information — came a playful imitation of 
objects, crude caricatures, and finally the pictorial 
art which has reached its purest form in the lyric 
landscape "where Nature's heart beats strong 
amid the hills." 

Just as the geometric design was governed by 
material and technic of manufacture; and just as 
it was modified by mixed forms and conflicting 
technics when transferred to wholly different 
material, — so was the purely imitative art of the 
primitives constrained by a two-dimensional plane. 
The draughtsmen in trying to represent objects 
having three dimensions, evolved grotesque com- 
binations and characteristics. 

Again, as the religious importance of art grew, 
its pictorial value suffered in proportion. This is 
evident not only among primitive groups where 
imitation frequently degenerates into the dia- 
grammatic and symbolic, as shown in fetish signs, 
but also in the art of a people as highly developed 
as were the early Egyptians. 

In prehistoric painting, as in other arts of the 
period, the motifs were not uniform, and the ar- 
tistic finish seems accidental or according to the 
technic required by the material. The aesthetic 
principle seems secondary in time to the spirit 
of play in the maker at work. But perhaps back 
of the spirit of play in the early stages of art is a 
dim aesthetic longing as mysterious and as far 



46 Painting 

away in its beginning as the thing we call life, 
itself. 

As to the primitive pigments, they were the 
natural earths, chalks, charcoal, and ochres. 
These afforded the earliest painters an effective 
palette: white, yellow, red, green, and brown, 
possibly blue. Very little preparation of the 
pigments was required, and the technic of their 
application might be described as flat smears 
filling crude outlines. These pictures naturally 
were not very durable. Innumerable mas- 
terpieces must have perished more than fifty 
thousand years ago, — a fact no doubt of some 
consolation to a few of our modern painters. 



CHAPTER VI 

EARLY PAINTING. I . — EGYPTIAN 

ANYTHING like the precise antiquity of Egyp- 
tian painting remains unknown. The pre- 
historic Egyptians, as is usual among hunter 
tribes, developed accuracy of observation with 
keenness of vision and deftness of hand. The 
paleolithic nomad came as near being a "born 
artist" as ever happens. His neolithic successor 
may have outstripped him in devising the utilita- 
rian means of comfort, but he rarely ever equalled 
him as an artist. 

The Egyptian aborigines probably first used 
pigments for personal decoration. Men and 
women painted their bodies respectively red and 
yellow. It is believed that the custom persisted a 
very long time, during which it became modified 
with the use of zigzag lines, the drawings of animals 
and of symbolic designs. At a later period, tattoo- 
ing often took the place of painting ; and powdered 
malachite was used for the green crescents which 
were put under the eyes. Their palettes were 
carved with the images of beasts, often done in 
relief. Their pictures included many varieties, 
47 



48 Painting 

such as representations of boats, temples, moun- 
tains, trees, human figures, and the forms of brutes. 
The later bas-reliefs arose from these early paint- 
ings. 

Religion, and a belief in the magic power of 
imagery, had impressed their art many centuries 
before the dynastic epoch. Nevertheless, the 
prehistoric artist was evidently a seeker after 
truth and a serious student of Nature; for his 
work has a certain charm of direct realism which 
indicates that his primary object was to represent 
Nature as simply and sincerely as possible. 

According to Petrie, the prehistoric period of 
Egyptian art extended from about 8000 to 5800 
B.C. The remains of tomb frescoes and of imple- 
ments, such as stone palettes and mullers, have 
been carefully studied. The pigments which 
have been found are powdered malachite, the 
natural earths, not very well refined, red cinnabar, 
and copper carbonate which gave them their blue 
used in the glazing of utensils. 

It is worthy of note that the manifestation of 
realism in the art of this early people is in striking 
contrast with the rigid and formal style of "classic" 
times. One was the art of the people, and the 
other of the rulers. One breathed a little of free- 
dom, while the other was restrained and slavish. 
The later sociologic period imbued art with com- 
memorative characteristics, and drew it to the 
tomb, temple, and palace; it became absorbed in 
mystic hieroglyphics and majestic symbols of 



Early Painting: Egyptian 49 

fixed and conventional forms which left little to 
individual expression or interpretation. Some 
particular trait of an object was selected to express 
an abstract idea; for example: a drawing of a dog 
stood for vigilance; that of a horse for swiftness, 
and so forth. This mode of expression developed 
into a complex system of hieroglyphic writing, 
which was very largely used to convey or to conceal 
religious dogmas. The purely ornamental motif 
was lacking; and nothing has been discovered 
indicating a transitional stage between the realism 
of prehistoric times and the formal or hierarchal 
art of the "old kingdom." This has led to the 
theory that Egyptian classic art was a Chaldaean 
importation. The theory is not unreasonable, 
since we know that in very early times Egypt not 
only traded with other nations but was a fountain- 
head of artistic ideas, especially to younger civi^ 
lizations. Some of the oldest Grecian architecture 
and designs bear the stamp of Egyptian influence ; 
this is particularly noticeable in the old Doric 
column. It is reasonable to assume that Egypt 
borrowed as well as lent. 

In historic times, painting has been traced back 
many centuries before our era. Pliny says that 
the Egyptians claim to have invented this art 
at least six thousand years before it passed into 
Greece. He adds: "Their vanity and lying are 
well known." Nevertheless, their earliest tombs, 
temples, mummies, monuments, and papyri bear 
clear evidence of the art, which, it is true, never 



50 Painting 

developed to any worthy degree. Sculpture and 
architecture were dominant. Painting was em- 
ployed principally to adorn with colour their hiero- 
glyphics, outlines, and bas-reliefs ; and that use of 
the art was continued in the ornamentation of 
their later statues, columns, and architecture. 

Pigments were laid on in flat masses; and it is 
generally agreed among students that the Egyp- 
tian painters never blended their colours. The 
bluish-green, now and then found on their an- 
tiquities, is merely a faded copper-blue; analysis 
has shown no trace of cobalt. Their two shades 
of blue were made of copper oxides slightly charged 
with iron. The reds, with which flesh was repre- 
sented, were of two kinds, brownish and brick- 
coloured: mixtures of iron-rust and lime. Some 
difference of opinion exists as to the composition 
of their green ; but chemists who have studied the 
subject seem to think that a transparent vegetal 
yellow was used with a copper-blue, probably 
superposed as a glaze in a gum medium rather 
than mixed with the mineral. There is little 
doubt that their yellow was a vegetal derivative, 
semi-transparent, bright and pure as the colour 
of sulphur. Black, it is thought, was obtained 
from wine lees, soot, and burnt pitch, and their 
white from gypsum. Madder was used for the 
dyeing of mummy cloths, and perhaps for other 
purposes. But their madder lake, unlike the 
modern, was an opaque pigment. Just how they 
prepared it is unknown ; but it has been reproduced 



Early Painting : Egyptian 51 

in modern times by boiling the madder root with 
gypsum and a small percentage of lime. Some 
chemists believe that alum was used as a mordant 
or fixing agent. Whatever the means may have 
been, the small particles of gypsum received a 
fixed stain of the vegetal extract. The modern 
method differs in that the base has a low index 
of refraction, making the colour, when diluted 
with a medium and applied as a glaze, more or less 
transparent. It is probable that in addition to 
yellow lake, made from Carthamus tinctorius, 
orpiment was used. As to varnish, its prop- 
erties were known and made use of in the nine- 
teenth and twentieth dynasties (1300 B.C.). 

Egyptian artists, with slight variation of method, 
painted indifferently on various substances, such 
as hard and soft stone, wood, linen, plaster, and 
papyrus; but they lacked the facility to make 
ornamentation simple, and the artistic power to 
co-ordinate parts with reference to the whole. 
Indeed, they never went much beyond the as- 
sembling of parts, apparently unconscious of the 
spirit of unity. There was virtually no progres- 
sion in their art. As Plato said: "The pictures 
and statues made ten thousand years ago are in 
no particular better or worse than they now make." 
It was only in painting that they took the slight- 
est liberty with prescribed formalism — now and 
then suggesting perspective in the position of their 
figures. If they had any real notion of perspec- 
tive, or any idea of the spirited imitation of Nature, 



52 Painting 

it was smothered by conventionalities prescribed 
by the priesthood, a caste which dominated art 
and, at one time, nearly everything else. The 
artists did, however, have distinct conceptions of 
colour harmony, the laws of which they seem to 
have understood. As draughtsmen, they were 
successful in contours and in the seizing of variety, 
especially that which indicated racial differences; 
and besides, they drew birds with remarkable 
cleverness. The few caricatures which survive 
make it plain that the Egyptians had a sense of 
humour. Composition and foreshortening were 
unknown. Marked distinctions were made in 
features and costumes, but individual character- 
ization was neglected. As said before, painting 
and drawing were little more than hieroglyphic 
writing, which changed form very slowly, — even 
then owing to fashion rather than to individual 
initiative. As a picture could only be produced 
according to canon, deviations were rarely coun- 
tenanced. If the king were represented, he must 
be larger than other members of the group. It 
was the law also that face, legs, and feet should be 
drawn in profile with shoulders and torso in full 
face. 

The ideal of Egyptian art, best expressed in 
architecture, was sombre and laden with the ma- 
jesty and mystery of life; its emotive elements were 
frozen, — as rigid and lifeless as the mummy, — and 
therefore poor liberators of energy. This was the 
very antithesis of the Greek ideal which embraced 



Early Painting: Egyptian 53 

beauty and was, consequently, inclined to be lively 
and joyous. 

The Egyptian method of laying colour on stone 
is interesting. First, the surface was prepared 
with a smooth stratum of white plaster, composed 
of lime and gypsum; then the surface was highly 
polished; over this was passed a thin lime- white- 
wash ; and on this the painting was done. Several 
vehicles are known to have been employed, such 
as glue, wax, and varnish. It is believed that the 
more skilful artists finished their work with a 
gummic glaze. In painting on wood, the coat of 
plaster was omitted; the whitewash was applied 
directly, on which the colours, suspended in glue- 
water, were laid with brushes. Virtually, the 
same method was used in painting on mummy cloth 
and papyrus; but the upper-class sarcophagi were 
treated with a technic which was much more 
elaborate and complicated. 

First and last, the Egyptians produced a great 
variety of paintings, — all characterized by a lack 
of emotive energy. The reason for this has been 
seen; and we no longer set these people apart in 
our minds as a strange and anomalous race. In 
that which we call human nature, they differed 
in no essential from ourselves. The Egyptian 
scribe represented with his pencil behind his ear 
might, to all appearances, be a modern account- 
ant. As to municipal affairs, they were up-to- 
date, even in all the devious ways of graft. Their 
emotions were thoroughly "human"; their hopes 



54 Painting 

and dreams were ours; their attitude toward 
natural phenomena was that of the rest of the 
world; their efforts at understanding phenomena 
differed in no material manner from the efforts of 
the rest of mankind which have given us the fine 
arts, the religions, and the exact sciences. In art, 
however, and especially in the branch of painting, 
their emotive energy was suppressed or, rather, 
absorbed by the greater emotive energy of their 
religion, liberated, as it were, through the canals 
of canon in lieu of the freedom and grace found in 
flowing streams. As there is only a certain 
amount of emotive energy available to any person 
or people, if it is liberated in one way it cannot 
be let loose in another. 

Thus, under the imperial sway of the priest- 
craft, emotional expression in the art of painting 
was not only still-born but already embalmed at 
birth. At the same time, the aesthetic nature of 
this people was too vital to bury this mummy of 
their emotions even at the behest of powerful 
priests sustained by an imperial organization and 
representing a multitude of gods. 

And so through many centuries this art grew 
by accretion, so to say; the mummy was slightly 
modified as winding-cloths were added or removed. 
Still, the resurrection day never came. The vital 
spark of emotion was never fanned into the flame 
of art to go "glimmering through the dream of 
things that were." Scenes representing phases of 
the civil and military life of their people were as 



Early Painting: Egyptian 55 

dead in spirit as the central idea of their funeral pic- 
tures. Neither was there any life in the pictures 
drawn from ceremonial and religious functions, 
nor from the domestic pursuits and vocations, 
such as farming, fishing, and marketing; nor 
yet in those taken from the avocations and sports, 
such as hunting, dancing, and gymnastics. All 
through their paintings was the spirit of "the sad 
vicissitude of things," with no hint of the fervent 
beauty dancing like a glad flame. Their pictures 
of gardens, ponds, markets, fish, and fruit-trees 
are scarcely more vital than their hieroglyphics. 
While in portraiture, efforts were nearly always 
confined to profile, which may have reached some 
degree of proficiency: perhaps individual charac- 
teristics of distinguished personages were more 
or less well suggested in outline from forehead to 
chin; and now and then some spirit is shown in 
battle-scenes; but in general it is negligible 
and of small account when considered as an 
art. 

In the early centuries, the Egyptians employed 
painting chiefly to illustrate events ; but the motif 
changed as their art intermingled with that of 
Assyria and Judea. It may have received some 
slight impetus and a mild form of energy from the 
Assyrians and the Jews which tended to lift it 
above the highest levels hitherto attained by 
native artists. Still it remained far below the 
later flights made by art in other lands. The 
Assyrian influence, at first, could have done little 



56 Painting 

more than enlarge the Egyptian models ; although 
in some of their very earliest work the Assyrians 
achieved the indefinable charm of a style all their 
own. Jewish art concerned itself principally with 
richer materials on which to use, for the most 
part, its borrowed designs. 

No art grows by itself alone; it must be nour- 
ished by the others, and it must be assisted, sooner 
or later, by science. Egyptian painting was no ex- 
ception. As for the raw materials of the art, this 
people suffered no dearth ; at hand were the acacia, 
the flax plant, the papyrus reed, the ochres, and 
many others. Commerce with Syria, Arabia, and 
other countries gave to the Egyptians copper ores 
which served as a basis for the blues and greens 
used in glazing stone, quartz, and siliceous work 
generally. The Nubian mines made gold leaf 
possible and convenient. Cobalt was found for 
the ancient potters' use. Linen and other textile 
fabrics were made and dyed. Painting was done 
on walls, coffins, and papyrus in illuminating the 
text. Painters were familiar with media made 
of glue, gum arabic, white and yellow of egg, 
balsams, resins, tar, and vegetal oils which became 
resinous by oxidation; they used red and yellow 
ochres, a dull and occasionally a light green, a 
beautiful blue made by the powdering of copper 
glaze, glass, or frit, and made into a pigment, 
which accords with a statement of Vitruvius. 
This blue was known at least as early as the 
eleventh dynasty, and it was used in Rome as 



Early Painting: Egyptian 57 

late as during the Empire. Wine vinegar assured 
them white lead and verdigris. 

It is evident that the Egyptians were well 
equipped for the mechanical art of painting; and 
that this art has been intimately associated with 
others such as those of glass-making and staining, 
enamelling, mosaic work, the dyeing of fabrics, 
and with the sciences of metallurgy, chemistry, 
optics, and hygroscopy. 

Indeed, man's aesthetic growth has always had 
its roots in strata which have supported his mate- 
rial needs. And it is obvious that any particular 
art is shaped and influenced by the materials it 
uses. This is exemplified by architecture, whether 
in stone, wood, clay, or other material, and by paint- 
ing, whether in pastel, oil, tempera, or encaustic. 

When all is said, Egypt lacked in the art of 
painting the splendid spirit born to endure through 
years that change, — a living spirit that is back of 
all art as the stars that gleam and throb back of 
life. In a land kissed by the sun's grace, painting 
took on the cold light of the sleepless moon; and 
its inspiration rose only to the point from which 
subsequent ages took the altitude of art. 



CHAPTER VII 

EARLY PAINTING. 2. — ETRUSCAN 

THE Etruscans were early borrowers from 
Egypt. In some respects the genius of this 
people improved nearly everything it touched. 
Their artists worked over crude Egyptian designs 
which they often made into things of beauty. As 
to the exact antiquity of their painting, there is 
apparently no settled agreement among historians. 
Pliny believed that it had reached a considerable 
degree of artistic development while the Hellenes 
were still engaged with the primitive problems of 
the art. Other authors believe that, unlike the 
Greeks, they had no easel-painting, and that they 
never acquired a high form of the art. Be that 
as it may, yEgean art soon surpassed the Etrurian. 
For it is well known that architecture, sculpture, 
and painting, developed to a considerable degree 
in Etruria, drew much of their beauty from the 
Greek fount. 

There can be little doubt that the Etruscans 

practised painting as a fine art at an early period. 

Pliny mentions antique paintings which were in 

fine preservation even at his day in the cities of 

58 



Early Painting: Etruscan 59 

Ardea, Lanuvium, and Caere. Many examples of 
the art from remote times have been preserved 
to us in Etruscan tombs. The work was done on 
a foundation of white stucco in a great variety of 
tints. Some of it is clumsy and realistic. Many 
of the more ancient pictures are crude and conven- 
tional, such, for instance, as were found at Veii. 
Others, again, show a style pregnant with beauty, 
and of correctness in design, that is quite remark- 
able — for example: those discovered in the tombs 
at Tarquinii. "In these tombs," says Westropp, 
"the pilasters are profusely adorned with ara- 
besques, and a frieze which runs round the side 
of the tomb is composed of painted figures, draped, 
winged, armed, fighting, or borne in chariots. 
The subjects of these paintings are various; in 
them we find the ideas of the Etruscans on the 
state of the soul after death, combats of warriors, 
banquets, funeral scenes. The Etruscans painted 
also bas-reliefs and statues." 

The growth of painting with this people is very 
well shown by the terra-cotta vases from 700 to 
200 B.C. And while the progress of painting in 
Etruria during these five hundred years is marred 
by fluctuations corresponding to aesthetic variations 
in its environment, on the whole it is surpris- 
ingly uniform. From simple designs of common 
subjects such as flowers, wreaths, and animals 
done in monochrome on brown or ash-tinted 
ground, to quite wonderful figures known to have 
been introduced as early as the first part of the 



60 Painting 

sixth century, is no little evidence of artistic 
variety and vitality. These figures were worked 
in brown on a ground of cream. Variations in 
colour scheme soon followed. Black, white, and 
crimson were employed with clear outlines which 
were often trenchant and nearly always spirited. 
About 450 B.C. black began to be used on a red 
ground. And a very interesting fact to note in 
passing is that some of the forms of the clay vases 
of the "Sixth City" of Hissarlik were reproduced 
in bronze by this people. 

The painters went little further in the imitation 
of nature than to represent the flesh of women 
with lighter tones than that of the men. About 
this time also appear figures of white, blue, and red 
on black ground. The dominant ideas of Etrus- 
can painters seem to have been related to the 
quest of harmony in colour, and of the problems 
of beauty in design, form, and composition. The 
motif was largely decorative; and no attention 
was given to the witcheries of light and shade. 
Just what the influence was of the Greek workmen 
on later Etruscan painting is perhaps very much 
a matter of speculation, and it is of no particular 
importance. , 



CHAPTER VIII 

EARLY PAINTING. 3. — GREEK 

THE Greeks, as we have grown accustomed to 
call the Hellenes, were a mixed people. 
Their solidarity was a result of language, of a 
state of mind lofty in ideals, passionate in the love 
of independence, and broad enough with the spirit 
of toleration to harmonize differences of politics 
and religion. 

Until the latter part of the fourth century, B.C., 
they were grouped in small city states, capable 
at times of united action which brought about a 
broad political harmony. They were blended of 
Northern and Southern elements to a various 
degree in different places ; and while Athens domi- 
nated the Northern, the Southern elements were 
swayed by Sparta. A composite conception of 
Greek life on the whole, therefore, is difficult to 
form. And its influence on the rest of the world 
down to the present time cannot be estimated. 

The effect of Greek culture on Rome we know 
was very great. In a word, Hellenistic art was 
borrowed, modified, and made Roman. In liter- 
ature, the Roman taste was a little higher than 
61 



62 Painting 

in the other arts, and therefore Hellenic literature 
was the inspiration of the Roman poets. The 
assimilation of Greek culture was complete in the 
Augustan Age. 

The Byzantine Empire was Greek in language, 
Roman in organization, and Christian in religion. 
Western Europe was in a dark age. The influence 
of Greek and Byzantine civilization on the art of 
Italy was as apparent and unmistakable as was 
the effect of the Etruscan on the earlier Roman. 

Eventually the spirit of the Renaissance broke 
out in Tuscany and spread over Europe. Art 
was reborn, and its Greek soul sweetened life 
with delight. A new love for knowledge and 
truth quickened the heart of Europe with many 
and diverse aspirations. Painting received fresh 
inspiration until it breathed somewhat of Greek 
ideals and exhaled somewhat of Greek glory. All 
the avenues of thought were bordered with the 
spirit of Greek temples, at least on one side. On 
the other, no doubt, was the dignified, orderly 
classic spirit; but the Greek spirit, to which some- 
thing had been added, was dominant in the end, 
of which the classic spirit was the means. Euro- 
pean civilization was close enough to the classic 
Roman at that time to see clearly how different 
from it was this rebirth or, rather, new-birth. 
It was only as men forgot that they began to be 
confused. This is markedly evident in archi- 
tecture and in literature. The English drama was 
a happy exception. In England the spirit of 



Early Painting: Greek 63 

Greece had found nurturing soil. Byron and 
Shelley felt the Greek freedom ; while on the other 
side of the Channel, Goethe and Hugo both had 
Greek souls. Even modern science, philosophy, 
and art have inherited from Greece nomenclature, 
method, and inspiration. Humanism and Demo- 
cracy have joined Athens with modern England 
across a span of twenty-five hundred years. 

Greek art naturally interests us more than any 
other of ancient times. In the first place, art 
reached its purest form in Greece. In the second, 
we of the West are the spiritual children of Hel- 
lenic civilization. We hope eventually to equal 
the aesthetic stature of our fathers, and to come 
to our own in philosophy. The hour has not yet 
sounded for us to take possession of the fulness 
of our heritage; but when that time comes, we shall 
welcome all the more a wealth which has been so 
long and so unfortunately delayed. 

Painters and others interested in their ideals 
and problems will never cease to regret the meagre- 
ness of the knowledge available of Greek painting. 
Therefore, the information which we have con- 
cerning the art is precious in proportion as it is 
small. Its actual worth today may not be as much 
to painting itself as to the psychology of the art. 

At all events, between lines and from fragments, 
one may read, sometimes vaguely and often in- 
distinctly, of technical variations which in later 
times were employed by the "Old Masters" in 
their best works. 



64 Painting 

Certainly, there abound luminous suggestions 
of the spirit of a great people ; and more than mere 
hints may be found of principles which have been 
recently uncovered by students of art and science. 
One of the most painstaking of these, for example, 
having studied the methods of the old masters, 
has demonstrated what thoughtful persons have 
long suspected, namely: that there is no antago- 
nism between art and science. That is to say, the 
work of a painter cannot be hurt by any definite 
knowledge which he may acquire of the principles 
of light, the laws of optics, the relations of physics, 
or the chemistry of materials combined in the 
process of producing his painting. In other words, 
knowledge of what he is doing will not mar the 
emotive values of his finished work. Wisdom is 
not likely to crowd out the feeling which may be 
in a painter's head. His art should have the aid 
of science if it would produce uniformly, that is 
to say, regardless of the excellences of accident, 
the best results of which it is capable. There 
can be no friction between the expression of sane 
emotion and the rational use of knowledge. Wis- 
dom and emotion work together in all their higher 
phases when expression is the function of intel- 
lectuality. 

It is well known that the old masters were 
versed in the traditions of their craft. One impor- 
tant element of their working-knowledge possibly 
came from the experience of artists in stained- 
glass effects. The heightened value of one colour 



Early Painting: Greek 65 

when seen through another was appreciated by 
them, if not scientifically understood. They 
knew how to produce in painting the illusion of 
luminosity; they understood both range and 
effect of superposed transparent screens when 
properly tinted and opposed by contrast. If they 
did not know the reason why certain results 
followed certain methods, they knew at least 
how to apply the methods, and their surviv- 
ing works prove that they achieved the fine 
effects. 

Whether the old masters rediscovered all the 
principles which they followed so well in their 
practice, and from which their technic was evolved, 
or whether some knowledge of these things sur- 
vived the decadence of Greek art through the 
Hellenistic and later periods, cannot now be de- 
finitely known ; nor is it of great importance, since 
similar causes, as it were, produce similar effects. 
In the words of Virchow: "The human intellect 
invents identical things at different places, and 
different things at the same place." 

It might, however, be of some importance to 
the future of painting if what is more than prob- 
able could be clearly established by proof, viz.: 
that the principles of painting together with the 
materials used produced virtually the technic, 
first, of the best Greek masters; second, of the old 
masters; and third, of the Tonal masters of inter- 
mediate and modern times. 

Greece was probably instructed in the art of 



66 Painting 

painting by Egypt; and possibly the Hellenes 
received some inspiration from Assyria's ideals of 
strength. The beginnings of Hellenic painting 
were poor enough, judged by later standards, to 
have sprung from a source almost as chaotic as 
our own modern school of Cubists or of Futurists. 
Pliny says, let us hope with the irony of indigestion, 
that even mediaeval Greek paintings had to be 
labelled to be understood. Still, it is an old saying 
that mighty oaks from little acorns grow. Greek 
painting grew from a sound acorn, and not from 
the worm-eaten little pignut, so to speak, which 
so many of our present-day painters are planting 
with such care. 

There may be truth in the contention that Greek 
painting as an art never reached the perfection 
and glory of Greek sculpture ; that it lacked move- 
ment and therefore took on statuesque character- 
istics which were out of place; that it sacrificed 
colour in order to perfect design; and that the 
subtleties of light and shade were neglected for 
proportion and charm of form; that it was never 
able to produce the higher chants of colour- 
harmony, and all that. 

Yet, if we had no other means of judging except 
by analogy, we should hardly suppose that a peo- 
ple so richly gifted with artistic feeling, so noble 
and exquisite in the conception and execution of 
sculpture and architecture, could have been in- 
capable of similar attainment in the kindred 
art of painting; and especially since we know 



Early Painting: Greek 67 

that they followed it so long with serious study 
and indefatigable zeal. 

It is conceded that the Greeks excelled in the 
arts of sculpture and literature ; but that the arts 
of music and painting were of parallel and syn- 
chronous development has been doubted by some 
authorities. One argument against the likelihood 
of a high order of painting having been developed 
by the Greeks is postulated on this doubt. 

As to music, judged by our modern standards, 
it is probable that the Greeks were below us in the 
evolution of this art. Athletic acrobats no doubt 
they were; but we have no evidence that they 
equalled the acrobatic feats of our present-epoch 
musicians. Even at that, a still small doubt 
lingers in the minds of some modern folk who love 
music that the later progress in this art has kept 
pace with the development of musical acrobatics. 
And it may be that the music which the Greeks 
coaxed from simple instruments and with which 
they accompanied their splendid choral songs was 
a higher form of the art than that which we torture 
from many strings and pipes. 

As to painting, it appeared as a fine art 
among the Hellenes later than sculpture, although 
its progress was perhaps more rapid. Throwing 
aside the Greek painters' popular reclame as no 
criterion by which to judge the aesthetic value of 
the art, it is hardly consistent to assume that it 
was therefore mediocre. No one, so far as I know, 
has questioned the intellectuality and aesthetic 



68 Painting 

taste of the Greek master-painters. Many of 
them won lasting renown in the sister arts. The 
aesthetic value which they placed upon the art of 
painting, as practised by them and their colleagues, 
it seems to me should not be disregarded. Surely, 
if the artistic taste of any people may be accepted 
as trustworthy, that of the Greeks at the best pe- 
riod of their art-cycle ought to have some weight 
with us. 

It is true that the paintings of antiquity have 
perished, as have the treatises on art, for the most 
part, by the ancient artists themselves. But for- 
tunately we have some records of both; and it 
seems only reasonable to assume that the art 
must have reached a high state of development to 
have called forth books on the subject by such 
men as Apelles, Protogenes, and Melanthius. 
Besides these books, there were Painting and 
Celebrated Painters, by Pamphilus; Symmetry and 
Colours, by Euphranor; and Junius adds others to 
the list in his Pictura Veturum. We know in part, 
as it is said in Corinthians, and we must guess at 
the rest. This truth justified Emerson in saying: 

Not from a vain or shallow thought 
His awful Jove young Phidias wrought. 

It follows that the majority of trustworthy 
historians are inclined to believe that the art of 
painting ran its full cycle in Greece. Although 
it may be true that sculpture was more in har- 



Early Painting: Greek 69 

mony with Hellenic temperament, and therefore 
preferred over painting, it still seems overwhelm- 
ingly probable that painting reached a rounded 
development when cultivated by a people so 
richly gifted. 

The very fact that schools of painting, in the 
modern sense, existed in Greece shows that the 
art had advanced to the large course of its de- 
velopment. In early Egyptian painting, and later 
in early Christian, the art was governed largely 
by tradition, which left little freedom to individual 
initiative and the art therefore remained static. 
But in the best era of Greek painting personal 
achievement and the individual triumphs of rivals 
and the successes of followers, formed into schools, 
gave a cosmic impetus to the art and an assurance 
of growth not only but an evidence that it had 
reached a high stage of evolution. From the 
later mediaeval period, down, a similar phenomenon 
is observed. Our own best modern work is the 
result of that phenomenon. 

Since we know that Democritus and Anaxagoras 
treated of perspective in a manner quite modern; 
and since the laws of perspective were well under- 
stood by Greek painters as early as the dawn of 
the fourth century B.C., it is very difficult for me 
to believe that the Greek mind at its best failed 
to perfect an art which it tried so long and hard to 
master, especially when full knowledge and appre- 
ciation of that which is vital to the art were current 
among the artists. 



70 Painting 

Tradition and history give a long list of names 
of Hellenic and Hellenistic painters, together with 
considerable comment on them and their works. 
Thus it would seem that from the earliest Sicyonic 
outlines, down through the monochromatic period 
to the time of Cimon of Cleonae in Chalcidice, 
there was steady if not remarkable progress. Then 
the genius of Cimon swept away with a stroke of 
his brush whatever archaic rigidity still clung to 
canvas. 

This painter introduced a variety of colours in 
his work and applied perspective to his figures; 
indeed, he is said to have been the first in his day 
to practise foreshortening. He also attacked the 
problems of anatomy and succeeded in represent- 
ing draperies that settle upon the form without 
hiding it. 

According to tradition, before the time of Cimon 
one Eumarus of Athens was the first Greek painter 
to differentiate the sexes pictorially. If true, he 
probably followed a custom of the early vase- 
decorators who represented female flesh with a 
lighter tone than that of the male. Pliny says 
that he also indicated the differences in age between 
his subjects. 

With the advent of Cimon, painting emerged 
from the uncertainty of tradition and entered the 
clearer light of history; and under his influence it 
culminated in the early Peloponnesian school. 
As the work of this school was confined almost 
wholly to wall decoration in the small rooms of 



Early Painting: Greek 71 

temples, it is presumed that its followers were 
fresco painters, who at that time were masters of 
at least two technics. Their palette was simple 
but powerful, composed of white, yellow, red, and 
bluish-black. It is said that they were better 
draughtsmen than colourists, which is probably 
true, yet not necessarily the sequence of a simple 
palette; for some of the best colourists have used 
few pigments. 

The great epoch of Grecian painting began at the 
time of Cimon and continued to that of Alexander. 
Polygnotus of Thasos, first to achieve great re- 
nown, went to live at Athens somewhere about the 
time of 460 B.C. He and his contemporaries estab- 
lished painting as a fine art in all its essentials. 
They handled colouring and form with power and 
understanding, and rendered character with facil- 
ity. Polygnotus is referred to by Theophrastus, 
Pliny, Aristotle, Cicero, and others. It is known 
that he worked with the hair-brush as well as with 
the cestrum. Then came Apollodorus, Zeuxis, 
Parrhasius, Eupompus, Timanthes, and others, 
who enlivened and embellished the broad or generic 
style of their predecessors in the previous genera- 
tion. The dramatic element was introduced in 
composition; form was enriched with local colour 
and colour with tone; character was accentuated, 
and objects were rendered more intelligible by a 
judicious treatment of local colour with regard to 
the accidental peculiarities of their appearance. 

The Alexandrian period was principally devoted 



72 Painting 

to refinement. It merely added, as Wornum says, 
"variety of method and effect to the already per- 
fect art of the preceding age." Among the great 
Alexandrian masters, of whom more will be said, 
were Apelles, Pamphilus, Protogenes, Euphranor, 
Nicias, Nicomachus, Aristides, Pausias. These 
painters belonged virtually to one class, although 
each won distinction in one or more of several 
qualities, chiefly technical. One strove to excel 
in high finish, another in grace, others in facility, 
in charm of light and shade, in figure-perspec- 
tive, in novelty, in grouping, etc. Aristides of 
the Theban Attic school, for example, paid his 
most particular attention to emotional expression, 
being rather careless and hard in his use of 
colours. 

The tendency was more and more in the direc- 
tion of technical excellence which too often degen- 
erated into mannerism. The higher and nobler 
qualities of the art were slowly sacrificed for 
petty effects; method and form engaged the at- 
tention of the masters rather more than essence 
and ideal. Naturally, their pupils were led in the 
same unfortunate direction. In certain other 
respects, decadence was even more rapid as it 
fell away from the Alexandrian period. A similar 
change occurred in Italian art at the beginning of 
the seventeenth century. The school of Carracci, 
compared with the Roman and Florentine schools 
of the previous century, illustrates much the same 
process of devolution as that which took place in 



Early Painting: Greek 73 

Grecian art during and following the Alexandrian 
period. 

In consequence of political convulsions suc- 
ceeded by economic confusion, governmental 
changes weakened the national spirit and so de- 
moralized the national power that Greece became 
a Roman province. Art did not recover from its 
decline. That class of the population which was 
the prop and the encouragement of art became so 
engrossed in war and politics that it could give 
little or no aid to art's languishing spirit. A still 
further depression of artistic inspiration was caused 
by the great abundance of masterpieces which 
filled Greece to overflowing. The victors found 
it easier to rifle her temples than to encourage the 
production of similar work — and it was cheaper. 
Finally, art sank to the level of genre, decoration, 
caricature, and, occasionally, eroticism. 

Hardly more than a cursory glance over the 
history of Hellenic painting leads to the conclu- 
sion that at one time it was no more than a sub- 
servient handmaiden to the arts of architecture 
and ceramics ; and that from a mere craftsmanship 
of crude colouring, it passed through various 
stages, assisted by the growth of indigenous arts of 
kin, and stimulated by the importation of exotic 
ideals, until it evolved into the fine art of painting, 
as we of today understand that art. 

Not until recent years has our knowledge of 
"Greek" art extended much beyond the sixth 
century B.C. This was a period of harmonious 



74 Painting 

growth in which the ideals of art, having early 
shaken off archaic influences, soon reached their 
fullest "classic" expression. The excavations of 
Schliemann revealed earlier wonders. The My- 
cenaean Age opened new vistas of a remoter civil- 
ization in which art had flourished and decayed. 

The researches of Sir Arthur J. Evans discovered 
surprising art-wealth in Crete of a period called 
Minoan. The great palace of Minos at Cnossos 
gives us glimpses of a high order of civilization as 
early as 2000 B.C. Under its walls lie the ruins 
of another royal abode which carries us back per- 
haps another thousand or more years. It was on 
the six-acre site of the palace of Minos that 
Mythology confined the monster Minotaur in the 
Labyrinth. 

The walls of this palace were admirably prepared 
to receive colour: rubble, lime, clay, and plaster 
were laid on in different thicknesses of progressive 
fineness and finish. The last layer was of lime, 
thinly and smoothly applied; and it was probably 
painted when wet. The colours used were black 
chalk, red and yellow ochres, and Egyptian blue. 
The use of this blue indicates that commerce 
existed between Crete and Egypt as early as 
between 1500 to 2000 B.C. — probably much earlier. 

Some of the frescoes are well preserved, showing 
remarkable paintings of processions, sports, court 
scenes, landscapes, and marines. "Both the 
signet types and other objects of art here discov- 
ered display the fresh naturalism that character- 



Early Painting: Greek 75 

izes in a special way the first Late Minoan period. 
A remarkable wall-painting depicts a cat creeping 
over ivy-covered rocks and about to spring on a 
pheasant." Many of the miniature wall-paintings 
of this period are especially fine. 

An earlier Minoan period, perhaps the Middle, 
so called, was rich in painted pottery of polychrome 
decoration known as "Kamares." At the same 
time a school of wall-painting flourished together 
with advanced metal technic and gem engraving. 
Steatite vases recently unearthed carry reliefs of 
great importance depicting warriors, wrestlers, 
hunters, pugilists, and reapers singing and dancing. 
There is also a limestone sarcophagus covered with 
stucco and painted with offertory scenes. 

There are also evidences that sculpture and 
painting were combined in coloured reliefs. Carv- 
ings in gypsum reveal traits almost Gothic. Even 
the sanitary arrangements, baths, etc., nearly 
equal the best of such things produced in our own 
times. The architecture of the palace suggests 
the Assyrian style. This period moreover pro- 
duced excellent modelling in ivory, metal, and 
stone, showing both grace and freedom of action. 
Indeed, there are countless indications of a very 
long previous epoch of artistic development which 
culminated in truly remarkable expression. 

Again, Schliemann's work on the supposed site 
of Troy has brought to light six cities, one built 
upon the remains of another, the fourth being the 
Troy of the Iliad. The ruins of this city yield 



76 Painting 

works of art similar in many respects to those of 
the Mycensean Age, which covers roughly a period 
of fifteen hundred years down to about iooo B.C., 
or to the beginning of the Dorian invasion from 
the north which scattered the Mycenasans over 
the ^Egean Islands. 

Pliny remarks that Homer does not mention 
painting. And Schliemann says, with exceptions 
noted, that "There is no trace of painting on any 
object ever found in any one of the five prehistoric 
cities of Hissarlik." I am told that some recent 
discoveries modify the force of Schliemann' s 
statement. However, Ilium, the "Burnt City 
of Gold," was situated on the fortress-hill of 
Hissarlik, where, among the ruins, have been 
found much evidence of prehistoric painting. 

The slow erosion of time, the rapid canker of 
strife, the revolutions of peoples, and the periodic 
devolution of civilization, have done much to 
obscure the memory and even to obliterate the 
names of Hellenic pioneers in painting. 

It is alleged, however, that Cleanthes of Corinth 
was one of the early figure-draughtsmen who, like 
the Egyptian Philocles, essayed nothing further 
than outline; that Telephanes of Sicyon, the cradle 
of painting, improved on the work of Cleanthes 
by his studies in anatomy and of shading; and 
that Euphantes of Corinth, or Craton of Sicyon, 
or both, advanced the art by experimentation in 
the manipulation of colour (Pliny). 

Bularchus (718 B.C.) was a famous painter of the 



Early Painting: Greek 77 

Asia Minor school, which antedated the Pelopon- 
nesian, and which in a given time progressed more 
rapidly in the use of colours than did the Pelopon- 
nesian. This was owing perhaps in part to the 
teaching of the Phoenicians and to the influence of 
the Phrygians and Lydians, who, by virtue of long 
practice in the management of pigments, had 
grown skilful. According to Pliny, Bularchus 
sold his large painting of the battle with the Mag- 
netes to Candaules, King of Lydia, for its weight 
in gold, or as some think, for a sufficient number 
of gold coins with which to cover it. 

On the island of Samos, historic painting rose 
early to a high pitch of excellence. Herodotus 
says that a large picture by Mandrocles, represent- 
ing the Persians as crossing the Bosphorus on a 
bridge of boats in 515 B.C., and depicting Darius 
as enthroned on shore, was honourably placed in 
the local Herasum. 

Calliphon and Agatharchus both belonged to 
the Samian school, which is thought to have influ- 
enced the work of Aglaophon of Thasos. 

Artistic energy never remains personal or local 
very long. Soon after painting approximated an 
art in its development at Corinth, it began to 
vibrate in Etruria, southern Italy, and Sicily. 

During the Second Period, so called, the Hellenic 
painters mastered to a considerable degree the 
technic of large composition, in which they de- 
picted battle scenes, and commemorated other 
stirring historic events. The decorative element 



78 Painting 

at this time prevailed in painting as in sculpture. 
Heroic legends were uppermost in the minds of the 
people. The artists therefore found it necessary 
to render variety of subject and, by treatment as 
well as in composition, to satisfy public taste. 
To this end much truth in nature was sacrificed, 
as, for example, in the rendering of human likeness. 
In order to whet public interest in pictures, many 
painters wrote the names of the persons repre- 
sented alongside their "portraits," as was done 
in the early days by the decorators of vases. 

Panasnus, brother, nephew, or cousin of the 
great Phidias (a painter himself at the beginning 
of his career) , was the first to introduce portraiture, 
worthy the name, in the painting of his battle- 
heroes. According to Strabo and Pausanias, he 
executed many famous works. 

Polygnotus of Thasos, whose twenty-four years 
of marvellous activity began about 480 B.C., was the 
earliest known great master in Hellenic painting — 
the most brilliant light perhaps of the Third 
Period. His accurate drawing was noted for its 
style and grace; and in the opinion of Aristotle, 
he improved on his models in his quest of ideal 
beauty. Philostratus intimates that he was 
effective in shading, a master of accent and airi- 
ness ; and Fuseli thinks that he helped very largely 
to educate public taste for the ideal in art. We 
know that he did work in public buildings both 
at Athens and Delphi. 

From scraps of history one must infer that 



Early Painting: Greek 79 

Polygnotus was a great master. When he essayed 
expression it was always in a meritorious manner, 
personally quite his own; and he coped success- 
fully with its variety of problems. His female 
figures were especially well done — vivacious and 
beautiful. He touched lips with smiles, put orna- 
ments in the hair, and threw transparent draperies 
into the playful arms of the breeze. He was well 
versed in legendary lore, — a man of broad culture 
and of many interests; and altogether he seems 
to have been a serious character: sincere, public 
spirited, and deeply thrilled with religious feeling. 

It is said of him that he reflected his personal 
characteristics even in his large tabular paintings. 
Many of his works are described in detail by Pau- 
sanias, "the gazetteer of Hellas." His paintings 
generally, whether in sacred temples or elsewhere, 
won for him great renown and public honour 
throughout the cities of Hellas. Aristotle praised 
his work as "dignified" and contrasted it with 
that of Zeuxis, which he called "pathetic" — two 
words of more ample meaning than we are accus- 
tomed to give them. Quintilian and Pliny have 
both referred to differences which existed between 
his style and that of Apelles. 

Although some authors have stated that neither 
Polygnotus nor Micon progressed further than 
coloured outlines, paying no attention to model- 
ling, it can hardly be doubted that Polygnotus, at 
least, was an innovator as well as a master; that 
he softened the previous rigidity and severity of 



80 Painting 

the features, painted open lips; and that beneath 
his draperies he suggested structure. A consider- 
able accomplishment at his time! In passing, it 
may be mentioned that his brother, Aristophon, 
was also a successful painter whose "works were 
distinguished for their expressive qualities," in the 
words of Champlin. 

Among the younger contemporaries of Polyg- 
notus were Dionysius of Colophon, celebrated 
for his laborious accuracy, and Pausias, the carica- 
turist, who was remarkable for his animal paint- 
ing, notably his big black sacrificial ox which he 
drew foreshortened. He was also noted for his 
ceilings, his miniatures of children, and for his 
technical refinements of encaustics; but he was 
even more renowned as the butt of Aristophanes. 
Some authors believe that he was of a later period 
than that of Polygnotus. 

Then, as now, the painter was confronted with 
many problems. An insistent difficulty, always 
present, is how to create that which seems probable 
while possessing novelty and some form of beauty, 
since the emotions are lured by beauty, ruffled 
and repelled by ugliness. 

Zeuxis (about 455 B.C.) was also aware of these 
problems, and he was able to overcome some of 
their difficulties. He was a fine colourist, in the 
sense of imitating colour as it appears in nature ; 
and he helped to advance the art with his novelty 
of subject and refinement of execution. He was 
a vain man, but not without some reason. When 



Early Painting : Greek 81 

he reached the summit of his fame, he no longer 
sold, but gave away his paintings. This must 
seem "queer" to the modern painter! Zeuxis 
worked very slowly ; once in reply to criticism, he 
said: "It is true, I take a long time to paint; but 
then I paint works to last a long time." Some 
author has said that his style was analogous to 
that of Euripides in tragedy. 

Many amusing anecdotes have been told of 
Zeuxis and Parrhasius, both being noted for their 
vanity. Zeuxis is said to have painted a bunch 
of grapes so true to life that birds tried to eat 
them; and Parrhasius, nettled by the success of 
his rival, set all Athens agog by painting a cur- 
tain so realistically that Zeuxis tried to pull it 
aside to see the picture behind it. This reminds 
me of the tale told of Sir Joshua's parrot : Reynolds 
had a maid who was on bad terms with the bird. 
One of his friends painted a portrait of the serv- 
ant that was so lifelike the parrot invariably 
attacked it on occasion. These anecdotes are 
probably on a par with one told of our American 
Mr. Church who played a "famous trick of paint- 
ing a bit of sunlight on his studio-table, — fooling 
his friends into searching for the chink that let it 
in." Zeuxis is said to have died of laughter while 
looking at one of his own funny paintings, which 
should warn painters to regard their own anecdotes 
rather seriously. 

Both Aristotle and Pliny lead us to infer that 
the Greek masters used white under-colouring or 



82 Painting 

groundwork; and according to Wornum, it seems 
"that Zeuxis executed designs similar to the Italian 
chiaroscuro upon a white ground." If this state- 
ment is true, it helps to prepare the way for inter- 
esting speculation as to the relationship between 
the technics of the old masters and their Greek 
archetypes. 

The female figures pictured by Zeuxis are said 
to have been unusually fine, especially his Helena 
of Crotonia, which has been widely praised. He 
chose his models from maidens celebrated for 
their beauty ; and he seems to have been assiduous 
in his devotion to the study of form and colour. 
He is also reputed to have grasped the indefinable 
quality of majesty which, it is said, he threw so well 
about his enthroned Zeus. The only element that 
remained with him of the older schools was the 
large mould of his figures. In brief, the person- 
ality and work of this man were far from negligi- 
ble factors in effecting a change in the style of 
Greek painting. 

Parrhasius, "the immoral painter," was a native 
of Ephesus but he was identified with the art of 
Athens, of which city he was made a citizen. He 
was regarded as a painter-philosopher; having 
established a canon in painting, Quintilian called 
him the legislator of his art. He excelled in draw- 
ing and he was master of proportion. It is the 
opinion of James Barry and others that he helped 
to introduce a style of art whereby Nature was 
represented in her broader aspects and higher 



Early Painting: Greek 83 

semblances. He seemed to feel the need of pro- 
priety in art, if not so much in personal conduct, 
which reveals a marked modernity of spirit. 

This master not only borrowed modelling from 
the plastic arts, which he presented to painting, 
but he grappled with human passions, mannerisms, 
and customs which he succeeded in expressing in 
his work. He achieved remarkable contours and 
delicate rotundity in his figures ; and his creations 
generally were noted for their richness and variety. 
He was regarded by his contemporaries as a pains- 
taking, conscientious worker who made it a rule 
to do careful pen-and-ink studies on parchment 
before starting a painting. Some of these draw- 
ings were extant at the time of Pliny. But, great 
as he was, he was vanquished in a painting-contest 
by Timanthes of Cythnus. 

In his Sacrifice of Iphigenia, this successful rival 
of Parrhasius carried grief to the acme of intensity 
possible to art at that time, or, perhaps, since. 
Cicero greatly admired this painting; and Pliny, 
speaking of Timanthes, says that there is "al- 
ways something more implied than expressed in 
his work." This suggests the touch that makes 
all genius kin. For the noblest expression of any 
art never takes all the juice out of the orange, 
but always leaves an indefinite quantity awaiting 
the various needs of numberless beholders who 
are supposed to extract it, as if by magic. 

The most striking effect in this celebrated pic- 
ture was Agamemnon's face hidden in his mantle. 



84 Painting 

Many critics have called it a mere trick; and M. 
Falconet, who had scant praise for Timanthes, 
believed that the painter merely copied from the 
description of the sacrifice, as it was found in 
Euripides: "Agamemnon saw Iphigenia advance 
toward the fatal altar ; he groaned, he turned aside 
his head, he shed tears, and covered his face with his 
robe.'" 

The weight of critical opinion, I think, is con- 
trary to this view. The face of the figure was 
veiled in compliance with a fundamental law of 
Greek art which permitted only the beautiful to 
be presented to the eye. And it is a racial mis- 
fortune that violations of this law are not held 
to be criminal; since it is a prime function of art 
to give pleasure to the emotions, pleasure can be 
attained only through some form of beauty; the 
presentation of ugliness, therefore, is a kind of 
murder which should be discouraged. 

Thus, in hiding the convulsed face of the father, 
Timanthes exemplified a principle that is univer- 
sal in the aesthetic world, and, sorry to say, almost 
universally disregarded. 

Parrhasius did his full share in helping to ad- 
vance the art of painting in Greece. His life at 
Athens was fruitful; and he had learned things 
from Socrates, with whom he was intimate, as 
well as from the great painters. His draughtsman- 
ship was celebrated; his colouring was better than 
that of his predecessors and most of his contem- 
poraries. Among his famous paintings were The 



Early Painting: Greek 85 

Contest of Ajax and Odysseus, Prometheus, Theseus, 
and Hercules. 

In some respects Timanthes carried the sacred 
torch still further to illumine the expression of 
emotion. He seems to have understood fully the 
vital objects of art, showing at the same time a 
high order of genius in expressing them. How 
much he owed to Asiatic influence cannot be 
definitely said. At this time there were two great 
schools of painting in Greece : one at Sicyon, which 
accentuated the importance of drawing, — of form 
and proportion; the other at Athens, which chiefly 
emphasized emotional expression. The Sicyonic 
school was founded by Eupompus in the early 
part of the third century B.C., possibly earlier. 
It was successful; but the chief renown of both 
school and founder was achieved by a pupil named 
Pamphilus. It was this pupil who perfected the 
foreshortening methods introduced, as some say, 
by Cimon; it was this pupil who brought about 
innovations in the handling of form and in the 
management of colours; and it was he also who 
founded the Academy. The work of Pamphilus 
was especially notable in the technic of encaustics, 
which in turn was further advanced by his pupil, 
Pausias. Among his other distinguished pupils 
were Apelles and Melanthius. He was one of the 
first Greek painters to profit by scientific attain- 
ments in his art-work. 

Euphranor of Corinth, as a sculptor-painter, 
wisely chose a mid-course between the Attic and 



86 Painting 

Sicyonic schools. He developed historic and 
mythologic painting to a higher degree than had 
hitherto been attained. He fed his heroes on 
beef, as he said, rather than on roses; that is to 
say, he painted flesh and blood. This man was 
not only great as a painter, but almost equally so 
as an author and a statuary. Pliny drew largely 
from his treatises on Symmetry and Colour. Lucien 
ranks him with Phidias and Apelles. 

Nicomachus, son and pupil of Aristiaeus, and 
father or brother of Aristides, was at the head of 
the school of Thebes, an offshoot of the Sicyonic, 
from the traditions of which it later diverged. 
He was praised by Cicero, Pliny, and Plutarch 
who "compares his pictures with the verses of 
Homer, as having, besides strength and beauty, 
the charm of seeming to have been executed with 
little effort " (Champlin). 

Aristides, of this school, painted a picture pre- 
served to us only in Pliny's description. This 
gruesome work represented a mother wounded in 
the breast at the capture of a town. Clinging to 
her bleeding flesh was a babe ; and on her face was 
an expression of dread lest the child suck blood 
instead of milk. 

Boileau observes "that a new and extraordinary 
thought is by no means a thought which no person 
ever conceived before, or could possibly conceive, on 
the contrary, it is such a thought as must have oc- 
curred to every man in the like case, and have been 
one of the first in any person's mind upon the same 



Early Painting: Greek 87 

occasion ; these reflections still do not render it difficult 
to distinguish imitation and plagiarism from necessary- 
resemblance and unavoidable analogy ..." and 
the same critic observes that Poussin is not accused 
of plagiarism for having painted Agrippina covering 
her face with both her hands at the death of Germani- 
cus, though Timanthes had represented Agamemnon 
closely veiled at the sacrifice of his daughter, judi- 
ciously leaving the spectator to guess at a sorrow in- 
expressible, and that mocked the power of the pencil. 
Neither can Raffaelle be accused in his design of the 
Pest, where he has represented a child creeping to 
suck the breast of its dead mother; though Aristides, 
in the picture of a Sacked City, has described the 
concern of a dying mother lest her infant, who is 
creeping to her side, should lick the blood that flows 
from her breast and mistake it for her milk. Poussin 
has committed a plagiarism where, in his picture of 
the Plague in Exodus, he has not only copied the 
mother and child from Raffaelle, but also the father 
who stretches over to push it from the nipple. (The 
Discourses of Sir Joshua Reynolds.) 

Such things show that offences have been com- 
mitted against the laws of art for a long time, 
even by those who should have known better. 
This spirit was beginning to infect painting, and 
it occurred in similar fashion to sculpture, notably 
at the hands of the three great Rhodians. It was 
characteristic, in a way, of the Hellenistic period, 
as exemplified by the Laocoon and the Farnese 
Bull 

Aristides also produced many genre pictures; 



88 Painting 

but he made his greatest reputation as a passionist, 
and he was very clever in the field of encaustics. 
Among other noted painters of this time was 
Nicias, he who "set his mark" on the marbles of 
Praxiteles. 

The style of Polygnotus and his school changed 
in the Fourth Period. The transition led to a 
new vogue in which dignity and nobility of char- 
acter, pose, and stately measure were sacrificed 
to subtler beauty and smaller effect. The spirit 
of the times had changed, and with it changed the 
manner and execution of art. The basic prin- 
ciples of art in themselves remain as fixed as the 
law of gravitation, or any other universal fact. 
They may be likened to the sea whose tides ebb 
and flow, and whose moods change according to 
the weather; but the sea itself never changes — it 
is always the sea. The superficial phenomena of 
society are as restless as the surface of the sea; 
they change and the tides of art change with them, 
shifting from age to age. 

It is the same today as it was in Grascian times. 
iEschylus had raised drama to the skies; both he 
and Sophocles laid great stress of importance on 
the peculiar requirements of scene-painting. The 
great scene-painter of that period was Agathar- 
chus of Samos. His influence on the works of 
Democritus and Anaxagoras, as well as his own 
example and personality, had a powerful effect 
in shaping the new school, and in formulating 
the requirements of perspective. 



Early Painting: Greek 89 

To Apollodorus, the Athenian, is given the 
credit of having been the first painter-priest, so 
to speak, among the Greeks to marry light and 
colour in the sweet bonds of shade. From this 
union sprang life in art. He was clever enough 
to discover that the eye sees not alone by light, 
but rather more by shade. He had sense enough 
to know, which many of us have not, that light 
in a picture is poorly suggested merely by painting 
in a high key. He understood at least some of 
the insistent needs of tone achieved by broken 
colour, — some of the primal necessities of his art; 
and thus he appreciated the values of contrast, — 
all which cannot be said of the great mass of 
painter folk from his day to this. 

It is true that Apollodorus had many advan- 
tages over painters who had preceded him. Per- 
spective had been discovered and developed; 
Agatharcus had invented scene-painting for a 
tragedy of ^schylus; and the wondrous sculpture 
of the Parthenon had reached the flower of its 
perfection nearly a hundred years before his time. 
Still, he was great enough to profit by the best that 
had been done in making something else better; 
and therefore he was a synthetic creator rather 
than an analytical constructionist ; and he was well 
worthy the praise bestowed upon him in the 93d 
Olympiad. Several of his paintings are mentioned 
by Pliny, and many of them were extolled by ear- 
lier authors. He was the first strong man, evi- 
dently, to master gradation of tone and to discard 



90 Painting 

entirely the old schematic empiricism for the living 
relations which exist in the light of Nature. 

In many respects, Apelles was the greatest 
painter of them all. In him were combined the 
choice qualities of previous masters and schools. 
With a palette almost as simple, it is said, as that 
of the Peloponnesian, he was acclaimed the great 
colourist; and, at the same time, he was able to 
grip the elusive quality called grace. From his 
own Ionian school he took that which was beauti- 
ful or good and united it with the best qualities of 
the Sicyonic. Besides fine colouring and sensual 
charm, he possessed a poise usually found based 
only on the safe ground of scientific knowledge. 

It requires a richly gifted intellect to weld the 
best qualities of others into a work more superb, 
bearing withal an individual impress. This it 
would seem is what he did; although, according 
to Plutarch, he studied at the renowned school of 
Sicyon, not for what he might learn, but for the 
reputation that it gave. 

From late Greek and various Roman sources, 
we learn that Apelles was a famous painter of 
deities, the best known of which was his Aphrodite 
Anadyomene. This work was often cited as the 
best example of his masterly genius. Augustus 
had it removed from Cos to Rome and placed in a 
temple. At the time of Nero it had already fallen 
into a state of decay, but it was still widely copied. 

Apelles, Zeuxis, Protogenes, et al., were such 
masterful painters that although their works have 



Early Painting: Greek 91 

perished, their fame still lives on earth. In the 
words of a celebrated Italian author: "They drew 
after the light of fancy, the examples of mind, 
which alone gives animation, energy, and beauty 
to art, and causes the loves and the graces to 
descend and to take up their habitation in . . . 
the emptiness of light and shadow." 

Apelles, the apogee of Greek painting, has been 
called the spiritual forebear of Raphael. How 
much there was in common between Apelles and 
Botticelli, it would be difficult to say. The fact 
that Botticelli was enabled to restore Apelles' 
design of Calumny, suggests nothing more than 
that Lucien's description of the original was par- 
ticularly fine. The truth is probably that Apelles 
and Raphael were alike and unlike, in that they 
employed similar technics and followed dissimilar 
ideals. 

Apelles, we know, painted at the court of Philip 
of Macedonia, and later he was so intimately as- 
sociated with Alexander, according to The Histo- 
rians' History of the World, that no other artist 
"had his consent to draw his picture." This 
accords with the reputation of Alexander, who re- 
fused to have any portrait made of himself except 
by the best artists. As a further mark of Alex- 
ander's admiration for Apelles as a painter, as 
well as of his warm personal esteem, may be cited 
this incident from Felicien Champsaur, — rather 
a severe test! " Champaspe, illustre courtisane, 
maitresse oV Alexandre le Grand et peinte par Apelle, 



92 Painting 

devenu si eperdument epris de son modele que le Roi, 
par admiration pour V Artiste, re?iongant & son 
amour, lui permit de Vepouser." 

The most marked characteristic of the work of 
Apelles, perhaps, was thoughtfulness ; but he must 
also have had the spontaneous creative faculty 
of an ideal artist despite the frequent criticism 
that he was deficient in poetic conception. It 
would seem that a successful painter of deities 
must have a strong poetic imagination, and that 
he must be rich in the expression of rare creative 
ability. It is conceded, however, that his treat- 
ment of light and shade was highly successful, and 
that he delighted in painting thunderstorms, 
which he did with ease and mythologic personifi- 
cation. In the words of Mrs. Browning, he was 
master of the "thunders of white silence." 

Pliny's opinions on art and his taste in painting 
are not highly regarded, but his quotations on 
these matters are instructive. As Reynolds says, 
when Pliny speaks of Apelles' glazes, he uses a 
language that has weight with students of technic. 
Pliny says that Apelles glazed in a manner of his 
own, using a varnish that was tinted dark; that 
in this way he subdued his colours and increased 
the depth of his shadows. John Opie was also per- 
suaded that Apelles was a superb colourist, since 
he was so greatly praised in high quarters. His 
Coan Venus, for example, received the admiration 
of age after age, and Cicero emphatically extolled 
its colouring. It was copied by Dorotheus, and 



Early Painting: Greek 93 

the copy was substituted for the damaged original 
in the temple of Caesar. 

Lord Bacon probably confused Apelles with 
Zeuxis when he wrote in his Essays: "There is no 
excellent beauty that hath not some strangeness 
in the proportion. A man cannot tell whether 
Apelles or Albert Diirer were the more trifler; 
whereof the one would make a personage by geo- 
metrical proportions, the other by taking the 
best parts out of divers faces, to make one 
excellent." 

Apelles has also been compared with Correggio, 
who, like his predecessor, lived in a period of 
creative decline; and like his successor, Apelles 
resorted to the last refinements of his art in order 
to combine attainment of effect with the touch of 
exquisite finish. His Venus, already mentioned, 
long after his time was sold to the Emperor Augus- 
tus for the equivalent of one hundred thousand 
dollars. Not a mean price for an old masterpiece! 

Apelles understood the technic of glazing, 
and therefore knew how to produce the illusion 
of luminosity and the chant of harmony. He 
used his thin dark glaze for more than one purpose; 
with it he warmed cold areas; with it he broke 
sharp and hard contrasts which he found again 
in places for purposes of accent; with it he sug- 
gested unity, and at the same time protected his 
pigments from atmospheric gases, moisture, and 
dust. Knowing so much about the glaze, it is hard 
to believe that he knew nothing of the scumble. 



94 Painting 

While not much is definitely known of his colour, 
it must be inferred from what is known of his 
process that he understood, at least in a practical 
way, the laws of optics, the range and limitations 
of his materials, the uselessness of burdening his 
art with the handicap of a faulty method, the 
added strength and beauty of one colour when 
seen through or within another; and that therefore 
his reputation as a colourist was deserved, espe- 
cially as he is known to have worked with a simple 
palette. It would appear also that he was a good 
suggestionist — well acquainted with the laws of 
sacrifice — and that, according to his own words, 
he excelled in knowing when to stop. 

In general, it is believed that he sought the 
larger, permanent truths which he preferred to 
the smaller and fortuitous; that he was efficient 
in his knowledge of the laws of contrast, including 
those of surface light and body luminosity; that 
he was a good judge of balance, and that he was 
the greatest master of composition among the 
ancients. It was during his time that painting 
was particularly devoted to the fine execution of 
composition ; and perhaps it then reached its apex 
in beauty and grace. 

Speaking of the work of this man, Pliny says: 
1 'In his portrait of Alexander in the character of 
Jupiter, the fingers seem to shoot forward, and the 
lightning to be out of the picture." This refers 
to the Ceraunophorus, "dedicated in the temple 
of Diana at Ephesus and for which," according to 



Early Painting: Greek 95 

Opie's Lectures, "Alexander gave Apelles nearly 
£50,000 sterling." To Fuseli, this portrait per- 
sonified "superhuman ambition." 

An interesting reference to the work of Apelles 
which, in connection with other material, throws 
sidelights on ancient art, is made in The True 
History of the Conquest of Mexico, by Captain 
Bernal Diaz del Castillo, one of the conquerors, 
written in 1568: 

. . . The gold and silversmiths' work both in cast 
metal and by the hammer, and excel, as do the 
lapidaries and painters. The engravers execute first- 
rate works, with their fine instruments of iron, espe- 
cially upon emeralds, whereon they represent all the 
acts of the holy passion of our Redeemer and Saviour 
Jesus Christ, in such a manner that those who had 
not seen them execute it, would not believe that such 
works could be done by Indians; insomuch that ac- 
cording to my judgment, that famous painter of an- 
cient times the renowned Apelles, or the modern ones 
named Michael Angelo and Berruguete, and another 
a native of Burgos who is in great fame, being as they 
say a second Apelles, could not with their subtle 
pencils equal the works which are done by three 
Mexican artists named Andres de Aquino, Juan de 
la Cruz, and El Crespillo. 

No one questions that art has its periods of rise 
and decline. There is something wavelike or 
rhythmical in its progress. Its continuity is not 
so much disrupted as obscured. Sj in discussing 



96 Painting 

the decay of Greek art following the time of 
Alexander, the story cannot be told in treating 
one phase of the phenomenon. Its decadence 
did not move in a uniform manner ; and its lowest 
stage was far from death. In both technic and 
spirit, it seems to have passed on to the old masters 
and maybe it persists today in the work of the 
modern masters. Among the painter-folk, as 
others, the masses may be swayed by folly in 
seeking strange gods, following freakish fashions 
and false principles; yet always a few are guided 
somewhat by reason or "the word." These are 
the chosen faithful who heed the large laws, adhere 
to good maxims, and keep the covenant. 

James Barry, in one of his lectures on the history 
of painting, says : 

Though nothing remains of Phidias or his contem- 
poraries, except the basso-relievos on the frieze of the 
temple of Minerva at Athens, and, perhaps, a few 
other subordinate fragments [as, for example, the 
Elgin marbles now in the British Museum] (all the 
greater works, both in painting and sculpture, having 
been long since miserably destroyed) , yet no intelligent 
man will ever be inclined to question the extraordinary 
excellence which has been ascribed to them. Every 
doubt will be removed when we consider the particu- 
lars specified, the universal consent, and the decided 
judgment of many of those who have given this testi- 
mony, and, above all, when we consider the very 
great excellence of the works which we have remain- 
ing, executed by the disciples and successors of those 



Early Painting: Greek 97 

greater artists, in times when the art is said to have 
been gradually declining and losing its most valuable 
qualities. 

Beginning in the second half of the fourth cen- 
tury B.C., the period of decline is marked by the 
waning of idealism and the striving for extreme 
naturalism. This decline culminated in mosaic 
art which found so much favour in the decorating 
of Roman houses. The finest known example of 
this style is the spearful picture of the battle of 
Issus when Alexander vanquished the Third 
Darius. It is believed, however, that this is 
merely a copy of a picture executed at Alexandria. 

Protogenes of Rhodes, a contemporary of Apel- 
les, while also a great painter, had the obstinate 
fault of overelaboration. He is said to have 
worked eleven years on one painting which he 
finished with four separate and complete glazes, 
after having glazed it countless times in parts. 

This artist was both sculptor and painter, noted 
for the high finish and delicate detail of all his 
work. All which is remarkable when it is remem- 
bered that "until his fiftieth year he supported 
himself by painting ships, then decorated with 
fanciful devices." He and Nicias of Athens had 
traits in common, although the Athenian excelled 
in the feeling with which he painted female figures 
and the forms of dogs — an unusual blend of artistic 
talent — besides which, he was more skilled in 
encaustics. It was this same Nicias who is said 



98 Painting 

to have been employed by Praxiteles to embellish 
(?) his statues with colour. 

Calades went to the simple scenes of everyday 
life for his subjects; and for that reason he has 
been called the precursor of modern genre. Other 
famous painters of this period were Antiphilusof 
Egypt, rated by Quintilian as one of the greatest 
painters of his time; Marcus Ludius, who won 
renown purely as a landscapist; Theon of Samos, 
celebrated for the action of his work ; and Aetion, 
of whom comparatively little is known. 

With this necessarily incomplete, but formid- 
able, array of distinguished painters, together with 
the inevitable horde of trailers and copyists, the 
Greeks had some reason for claiming the invention 
of painting as they understood it and as we under- 
stand it. 

It is true, as has been intimated, that relatively 
little is known of their local colouring, etc. Much 
of our information has been drawn from obscure 
sources, from fragmentary references and later 
imitations; yet all these things may be so well 
woven together that the blank places in the fabric 
can be filled in fairly well with conjecture founded 
on a thorough knowledge of the art. 

Even those who decry Greek painting admit 
that the Greeks had a wonderful play of pictorial 
fancy, a fine perception of light and shade and of 
colour-harmony. It is conceded by all that they 
excelled in exquisite draughtsmanship and rhythm 
of line; that for action, beauty, and skillful ar- 



Early Painting: Greek 99 

rangement in composition, they have never been 
equalled; that they had a wide range of subject, 
— were masters of fresco-technic in wall-painting, 
and of tempera technic for panels; and that, at 
the best period of their art, they were masters of 
painting with dry wax-sticks: burning the colour 
into carefully prepared surfaces. 

And since the Greeks achieved a splendour in 
architecture, sculpture, and literature unequalled 
at any other time in the history of civilization, 
it is not likely that they failed in painting, espe- 
cially when we note the symmetry and balance 
shown in the decorative work on vases, etc., ad- 
mittedly executed by inferior artists; and when 
we remember that it was from Greek art that the 
Renaissance drew its inspiration. 

Thus it is reasonable to assume that Hellenic 
painting followed the known laws of development ; 
that it rose to a high state; that it fell into evil 
ways; and that it finally passed off the stage to 
reappear elsewhere. Times affected the artists' 
ideals, which ran the gamut: now high and pure; 
again basely sensual and flippant. The work of 
these painters has totally perished; but it was 
strong enough to make an impression that has 
not entirely faded through centuries of misfortune. 

There are two valuable sources of information 
concerning the manner of their work: first, the 
Pompeian paintings, done by skilled workmen 
merely, and not always intended as copies, which, 
nevertheless, are known to reflect in a measure 



ioo Painting 

the style if not the spirit of the originals; second, 
many painted vases, also done by inferior hands, 
the work of which however shows charm of execu- 
tion, beauty, power of glaze, and considerable 
facility of colour. On black ground the red 
figures are set off with accessories of red, yellow, 
violet, green, blue, and gold. Many of these 
vases still extant were trophies of the Panathenaic 
games held at Athens. The exact years of award 
can be told of some of these trophies by the archon 
inscribed on them. This fixes the period of which 
they were true specimens of art. Then by com- 
paring these with the large number of undated 
vases, much additional information may be 
obtained. 

The so-called Romantic painting blossomed to 
its fullest during the Fifth Period. The campaigns 
of Alexander had revealed the gorgeous East to 
the Greeks. Luxury and opulence — twin vam- 
pires ever stalked by decay — had whetted their 
taste for picturesqueness and romance in art. 
Allegorical figures had supplanted the ideal types 
of deities. Character-studies, which imply the 
faculty of close comparative observation, slowly 
came into fashion. Following the development 
of this keen faculty, or concomitant with it, arose 
the power of generalization; and this made com- 
posite portraits artistically possible; it gave birth 
to new types created from a number of individuals, 
as referred to by Bacon. Noted painters were 
becoming scarce. The imaginative power was in 



Early Painting: Greek 101 

rapid decline. It became the custom to copy and 
to modify old masterpieces. 

Despite all these marks of decadence, the Hel- 
lenistic sculptors were yet able to produce such 
pieces as the Dying Gaul and the Belvedere Apollo; 
the painters still retained fine taste and excellent 
discrimination making for pictorial effect; and 
they managed their colours with increasing ease 
and with the utmost refinement of handling. 
While the spirit of art was languishing, its technic 
was developing. 

Notwithstanding the depreciatory statements 
of Pliny and Petronius, we find by studying and 
comparing the paintings of this late period, espe- 
cially those of Pompeii and Herculaneum, that 
although the painters went to the older models 
for their work, they also produced many striking 
pictorial effects independently and quite of their 
own accord. Still, this was the period of the 
decadence of Greek painting which overspread 
Rome with a gradual decay of the finer spirit in 
all art. 

Thus we see that the Egyptian motif was his- 
toric, mysterious, majestic — static with hierarchic 
dignity; that of the Etruscans, largely decorative; 
while Hellenic painting was, at its best, emotive, 
and therefore more purely artistic. Through 
classic beauty the Greeks sought to express all 
that was worthy in human emotions. The discov- 
ery of the emotive value of art is one of the great- 
est ever made by any people ; and, as I have said, 



102 Painting 

it is of unique interest to us because it was destined 
to become our heritage. 

Materials Used by Greek Painters 

There are many reasons for believing, some of 
which have been given, that painting as a fine 
art was highly developed in Greece; and one of 
the best is the abundance of painters' materials 
mentioned and described by ancient authors. 

This is the situation: Let us assume the total 
destruction of all our paintings; the survival of 
mutilated catalogues of a few galleries, and the 
damaged price-lists of one or two artist supply- 
houses; add to these several of the muddy carica- 
tures, called copies, vomited every year by the 
Metropolitan; some tattered "Baedekers"; a 
number of scattered pages torn from books on 
modern painting ; and a few battered pieces of our 
sculpture. Then something similar to our source 
of knowledge of Greek painting would be avail- 
able to students trying to scan the art of our times 
through the haze of intervening centuries. Even 
then, our source of information concerning Greek 
art would be still richer than that possible to the 
condition assumed. For the relics which we have 
of Greek art are on an average so incomparably 
superior to any fragments which might be left of 
our own that the hypothetical parallel is wide and 
vague. 

Beginning with media, those most generally 



Early Painting: Greek 103 

used by Hellenic painters appear to have been 
gum and glue; but egg, resins, oils, and varnishes 
were also commonly employed. Water-colours 
were understood and managed from early times. 
Wax was not only used in encaustics, but for pro- 
tective and other glazes as well. 

The materials painted on were diverse: wood, 
stone, clay, plaster, parchment, and canvas. Of 
these the most favoured were wooden tablets or 
panels, which when painted were variously framed 
and encased in walls. Of artists' tools, the palette 
and easel were similar to our own. The pigments 
used by the earlier painters were mostly earths, 
such as the white of Melos, the yellow ochre of 
Attica, the red earth of Pontus, called sinopis, 
and the artificial darks made of mixtures with 
lampblack. 

It is probable that the best artists were conser- 
vative in the use of colours ; and that they restricted 
themselves, for the most part, to the simpler 
palettes. The introduction of new pigments, 
more and more refined, was continuous however 
until, and very possibly later than, the time of 
Apelles. Then as now, no doubt, it was endeav- 
oured to conceal artistic failure with scheme and 
colour, or with mere freakishness. Following the 
period of Zeuxis and Polygnotus, the number and 
refinement of pigments rapidly increased. 

"So great, indeed," says Westropp, "is the 
number of pigments mentioned by ancient authors, 
and such the beauty of them, that it is very doubt- 



104 Painting 

ful whether, with all the help of modern science, 
modern artists possess any advantage in this 
respect over their predecessors." 

Wornum gives a very efficient list of colours 
used by the ancient artists. This is made up of 
reds, yellows, greens, blues, purples, browns, 
black, and white. A casual glance over this list, 
which as given here is far from complete, may be 
surprising to many persons who paint, as well as 
to others who do not. 

Red : vermilion, or the red sulphid of mercury, 
known as cinnabar, and once called minium (from 
which the word miniature is derived; Vitruvius 
and Pliny) ; cinnabaris, or the resinous fluid of 
Calamus draco, vulgarly called "dragon's blood," 
mentioned by Pliny and Dioscorides; red oxides 
of lead and iron; red ochres; sinopis, a fine red 
earthy pigment ; the red protosulphuret of arsenic, 
etc. In the opinion of Sir Humphry Davy, crim- 
son was made by combining sandarac with a cal- 
cined red. In order to heighten the effect of this 
crimson, a purple glaze was used, the medium 
of which was a white transparent resin obtained 
from the sandarac-tree. 

Yellow : orange ochre, or the hydrated peroxid 
of iron. This powerful and durable pigment was 
used as the base of several yellows. It is said 
that the Greeks employed a great variety of ochres 
found at different places, but that preference was 
given to the Attic. 

Green : A protoxid of copper silicate, called 



Early Painting: Greek 105 

chrysocolla, was highly favoured; it was derived 
from decomposed copper ores; and its range of 
tone was from a bluish-green to a sky-blue. An 
artificial green was made by treating cyanosite 
(blue vitriol as found in nature) with a yellow 
dye. There were also inferior greens composed 
of clays and earths. 

Blue : Of blue there were many varieties: 
Alexandrian, derived from the silicates of copper 
and lime; and Armenian, probably ultramarine 
(lapis lazuli); these were most highly regarded; 
but the carbonate of copper, oxids of tin and co- 
balt, indigo, and others, were known and used. 
Pliny's "sapphirus" most likely was lapis lazuli. 

Purple : Having so many kinds of reds and 
blues, the Greeks also had, presumably, many 
varieties of purple. Several are mentioned by 
early authors. Vitruvius speaks of hysginum, 
which he describes as a colour between scarlet and 
purple. A fine white clay steeped in a purple dye 
secreted by two species of the genus Murex was 
much used and highly prized. This animal secre- 
tion enabled the colourists to produce almost any 
shade from minium to blue. Murex trunculus 
and Purpura hcemastoma were commonly used in 
the manufacture of purple. Murex trunculus 
was used in ancient Tyre; Purpura hcemastoma is 
used even today by the fishermen of Minorca in 
dyeing their shirts. There are numerous passages 
in the Homeric poems referring to purple and its 
uses, showing that it was well known to the Greeks 



106 Painting 

in remote times. Honey was often made use of 
to thicken thin dyes. Red ochre was mixed with 
the blue oxid of copper. The celebrated Tyrian 
dye was combined with others, not only for colour 
effects, but for the fixing, or the making of fast 
colours. 

Brown: The browns were derived from burnt 
ochres, oxids of iron and manganese, and ochres 
mixed with black. 

Black : Black, as found in nature, came from 
earths, the deposits of tar, and from the secretion 
of the cuttle-fish — a fluid known as sepia ; while the 
artificial black was manufactured from carbonized 
wine-lees, lampblack, calcined ivory, etc. Pliny 
mentions air amentum indicum, which is known 
by us perhaps as India ink. 

White : This was obtained solely from earths 
found in Africa, the island of Melos, and elsewhere. 

There were three principal methods of using 
these colours: distemper, glazing, and encaustic; 
and there were also many others, modifications of 
these. Sir Humphry Davy believed that there 
was much in common between the Greek, Roman, 
and Venetian masters in their methods; their 
technics were similar if not exactly the same; on 
the whole, all were sparing in the use of florid 
colours, and the best of them sought their effects 
chiefly by means of contrast and tone. 

And now, incidentally, a word on Polychromy, 
as related to the true art of painting ! This mon- 
ster was born early in the history of art, waxed 



Early Painting: Greek 107 

strong during the archaic period, and passed away 
at the height of the best epoch in Greek art, only 
to reappear in later and less sensitive times. 

It is known that the Cnidian Venus of Praxi- 
teles was not coloured ; and that Phidias preferred 
his effects in pure marble to those of ivory and 
gold. He sacrificed his taste for marble in art 
only to the less refined demands of religion. It 
is only reasonable to suppose that the best Greek 
artists generally separated the two arts of painting 
and statuary. It is not likely that they wished 
to mar their statues with colour. They loved too 
well the purity of form clothed only in the grada- 
tions of shade to disfigure marble with paint. 
They knew too much of art, and their feelings 
were too refined to confuse the music of light and 
shadow, as it played around their divine marbles, 
with the blatant barbarism of premeditated stains 
and vulgar discolourations. It was only as art 
declined that the taste grew tolerant of more 
primitive things. 

"The ancients," wrote Vitruvius at the time 
of Caesar, "laboured to accomplish and render 
pleasing by dint of art, that which in the present 
day is obtained by means of strong and gaudy 
colouring, and for the effect which was formerly 
obtained only by the skill of the artist, a prodigal 
expense is now substituted." 



CHAPTER IX 

THE ROMAN PERIOD 

It has been observed that the Arts have ever been 
disposed to travel westward. Greece is thought to 
have received them from her more eastern neighbours. 
From the Greeks they migrated into Italy; thence 
they visited France, Flanders, and Holland, enlight- 
ening for a time those countries though with dimin- 
ished lustre, but, as if the ocean had stopped their 
progress, they have for near an age stood still, and 
grown weak and torpid for want of motion. Let us 
for a moment flatter ourselves that they are still in 
being, and have at last arrived at this island. (Sir 
Joshua Reynolds, Discourses, ist ed.) 

THE Latins began to establish themselves in 
cities at about the time when the Homeric 
poems were composed. Their art grew up very 
naturally with their political institutions, and it 
flourished with the full development of the Roman 
state. 

Painting with this people had its crude begin- 
nings as early as the eighth century B.C. As far 
back as the third century there were native paint- 
ers of distinction, some of whom no doubt worked 
108 



The Roman Period 109 

independently of outside influences and laid the 
foundations of a distinct character which finally 
developed a kind of realism, not without interest 
and charm. 

Nothing is known of the earliest sources of 
inspiration of this branch of art among the Latins 
until the Etruscan influence virtually became 
dominant. Other movements came in from abroad 
to modify it. When the Celtic tribes receded 
from Rome, after having destroyed Etruscan 
power, it is barely possible that they left a slight 
impress on Latin art. And when Rome became 
predominant in the Latin League ; when she broad- 
ened her trade; and when she was beginning to 
feel the first awakening thrills of an ambition 
which soon embraced the world, she began to 
borrow art from other peoples, which gradually 
weakened the Etruscan element in her style. 

Following the second Punic War, there was an 
influx of Greek art and artists. Thenceforward 
the art of Rome was subject not only to the fav- 
ourable influence of Greek art but also to its vicis- 
situdes. There was a sturdy element of realism, 
however, in Roman art which, although modelled 
after the Greek, still contained a new, or at least 
a different, conception. This is very well shown 
in sculpture. While it is true that a great deal 
of this in ancient Rome was done by the Greeks 
for their Latin clients, yet a considerable amount 
remained in the hands of native sculptors whose 
work was divided between the copying of Greek 



no Painting 

masterpieces, and the doing of original things, 
for the most part in a kind of Greek style. Never- 
theless, wherever the Roman spirit is discernable, 
while it lacks something of the Greek idealism 
and achieves something of Hellenic dignity and 
excellence, it reveals another element of its own, 
or a lifelike realism. 

There is a parallelism apparent in painting as 
shown by the frescoes of Herculaneum and Pom- 
peii. For while much of this work was done by 
inferior Greek craftsmen during the Hellenistic 
decline, a certain amount of it was done by Roman 
painters whose work reveals the same realistic 
characteristics, so unmistakable in Roman sculp- 
ture. A few of the frescoes of this period, done 
by native painters, resemble modern impression- 
ism; while the decorations of the Rospigliosi have 
been compared with the Fragonards. 

Indeed, a certain indefinable spirit of realism 
seems indigenous to Italian soil ; and this spirit be- 
came more pronounced than ever when it received 
a stimulation from the art of the Eastern Empire. 

The Roman republic with all its wealth and 
power was never able to approximate the perfect 
art of the great Greek epoch. And Constantine 
failed to arrest the decline which continued down 
through the age of the Antonines to the rise of 
Christianity. The flood of barbarism rising on the 
one side, and the tides of a new religion flowing 
in from the other, submerged the last remnants of 
classic art. 



CHAPTER X 

EARLY CHRISTIAN PAINTING 

EARLY Christian painting was born in the 
gloom of the Catacombs. Although it 
issued forth, spreading far and wide, it was never 
able to shake off the repulsive characteristics of 
its hideous origin. It triumphantly covered walls 
with unsightly saints represented in paint or in 
gilded and gaudy mosaic work. 

The primitive Christians had an aversion to 
pictures and images ; and they were modest enough 
to refrain from trying to depict the eternal attri- 
butes of God. They lacked the sentiment, the 
imagination, and the power to render sublimity; 
and later when they tried to express majesty, they 
merely caricatured the human passions. As they 
became bolder with power, they symbolized the 
Redeemer with pictures of Orpheus and the Good 
Shepherd. Eventually, the face of Christ was 
given the features of Jove or of Apollo. Their 
Prophets resembled Greek philosophers dressed 
in the pallium; shepherds of the Magi were given 
Phrygian robes and caps; the Virgin was put in 
the chlamys. Their painting, bad as it was, 



ii2 Painting 

steadily degenerated; and even their mosaics of 
the fourth century appeared to be resurrected 
from the Catacombs. 

"The tree is known by its fruit." Art depends 
on prototypes. Pagan art had declined but its 
manner persisted with these early Christian 
painters. They changed subjects but retained 
in the Catacombs the manner of the Pompeian 
wall-paintings. The miserable dogmas of the 
new religion held the poor weakened spirit of 
pagan art by the throat and refused it any freedom. 
The grip was even tighter on the neck of sculpture. 

This is the art that actually filled in the lapse 
between the old pagan and the later period of 
Christian art proper, or between the Classic period 
and the Gothic. The painters of this melancholy 
time despised the human form; they regarded the 
body as sinful and therefore unfit to represent their 
ideas of divinity. To these stupid but pious 
beings, only the soul was pure; and to represent 
its ideals they chose such symbols as the alpha 
and omega, the cross, the blessed lamb, the palm 
branch, and the fish: rather ghastly old symbols 
to stand for ideas or attributes of the new divinity ! 

Naturally, some pagan ideas here and there 
crept into the works of a few painters at this 
period, but they were given a new significance. 
Roman art was corrupted. Ideals did not exist, 
and Nature was robbed of beauty. Grace and 
pleasing proportion disappeared in the monstrous 
attempts at spiritual grandeur. 



Early Christian Painting 113 

During the decline of the Western Roman 
Empire, the Byzantine influence permeated Euro- 
pean painting, as indeed it did nearly all other 
branches of art, especially architecture and sculp- 
ture. Its formalism became too crystallized to 
permit further development. Its one happy 
effect was a kind of break, in the form of gorgeous 
splendour, put on the early Christian devolution 
of art ; but it failed utterly to inject life. It sought 
dignity and repose and achieved little more than 
a bedecked formalism. This at least had some 
pleasing features, while the early Christian work 
had none. The Byzantine formalism moulded 
figures and prescribed attitudes. It drew elon- 
gated forms, and noses as thin as razors, narrow 
oval faces, large eyes, small chins, and, -generally, 
evoked lifeless pose. The emotions were all 
solemnly dead. Only in some of the miniatures 
of this doleful period were exhibited any of the 
emotive values. 

Here again the subjects remain early Christian 
and only the manner Byzantine. Christs and 
Virgins, swarms of angels in dazzling glory! they 
were all there and everywhere, together with 
stately thrones, stiff, bearded old saints or sinners 
in their dotage and covered with impossible robes 
suggesting not even the skeletons of forms beneath. 

In the eighth century A.D., the awful bigots 
destroyed as much as they could of the art of the 
East. The old glories were hateful in the sight 
of the new god lately risen to power. This un- 



H4 Painting 

holy onslaught of the ferocious iconoclasts dis- 
persed the artisans and the artists, who thereupon 
migrated to Western and Central Europe. In 
its new environment this Byzantine element arose 
to great eminence, especially in miniature work, 
and it succeeded in driving the Gaelic work- 
men out until they kept a foothold only in 
Ireland. 

Thus from the eighth to the tenth century the 
crafts and many of the arts were in the hands of 
the Byzantines. Certain styles of Celtic orna- 
mentation persisted in the North countries; but 
Southern, Western, and Central Europe were 
dominated by Byzantium, which controlled the 
ivory-carving, metal-work, and enamelling. The 
effects of Moorish and Saracenic influences need 
not detain us here, since painting was not one of 
their arts, as we understand it. 

The Romanesque Period 

During the Romanesque period architecture 
dominated all the other arts. That is to say, 
Art was subordinate to the Church. Following 
the fall of the Roman Empire and the shifting of 
world power to the northward, art was almost 
wholly in the hands of the religionists. The chief 
industry was the building of churches. Individ- 
ualism of expression scarcely existed; the practice 
of the fine arts was governed by church traditions ; 
painting was mostly done by priests and monks; 



Early Christian Painting 115 

it had become shrivelled by conventionalism and 
inchoate with a mixed symbolism. 

The pleasing features of Byzantine art were 
displaced, and in their stead glared ugly stiffness 
or sad clumsiness; both painting and sculpture 
were in a low state ; the sole link which connected 
the Classic and Gothic periods of art was found 
in ivory-carving, metal-work, and enamelling. 
Painting was restricted to a narrow field, such as 
the illuminating of missals, — which barely kept the 
breath of life in the art, — and the covering of 
church walls with impossible figures, poorly done 
and according to rule. It was only near the close 
of this period that artistic freedom began to show 
itself. The opening of the thirteenth century 
ushered in some liberty of individual expression. 
This was the morning of the Gothic epoch: some- 
thing like summer — something like stars for the 
crown of midnight — something like sunlight for 
noon when waters should answer waters and fields 
should wear lilies where "blossoms not thorns, 
and flowers not blood should break." This was 
the dawn of an epoch that shed great emotions 
as the oak sheds its leaves. 



CHAPTER XI 



THE GOTHIC 



ARCHITECTURE continued to influence paint- 
ing profoundly in several ways. The Gothic 
style of the North gave birth to the art of stained- 
glass window-making. This no doubt affected 
the technic of the old masters by suggesting the 
possibilities of coloured glazings in painting. The 
painters were forced into stained-glass work; be- 
sides this, their paintings were pretty much re- 
stricted to small panels for altar-pieces. 

An awakening tendency toward naturalness is 
noticeable in the art of this period. Nature was 
studied and often closely followed by the Masonic 
stone-carvers; and the emotions began to find a 
semblance of expression in painting. Figures, 
whether painted or carved in wood and stone, 
were freeing themselves from erstwhile formalism, 
and leaning more and more toward realism. A 
rational attempt was made at portraiture which 
was often successful. The fluid rhythm, the 
swinging grace, and the flowing line had become 
infectious in art. A new element and a fresh 
impulse were given to painting. 

116 



The Gothic 117 

To the architecture of the South, the pure Gothic 
style of the North remained alien. In Italy, the 
result was a blend of Gothic and local character- 
istics. The old classic instincts of art had never 
entirely disappeared. Climatic requirements of a 
region, bathed in an abundance of light, and heat, 
restricted the window-area and therefore widened 
the scope of wall-decoration. This condition was 
naturally favourable to the development of paint- 
ing and mosaic work. 

In the South, painting had retained a little of 
its independence. Burdened and obscured, as 
it had been, by the Byzantine traditions, its spirit 
reasserted itself at about the middle of the thir- 
teenth century. To this effect Niccola Pisano of 
Pisa was one of the instruments. His fondness 
for antique traditions revived for the moment some 
of the classic spirit. Following his isolated but 
potent efforts, Florence and Siena protested against 
the lifeless Byzantine formalism; and they helped 
to free painting of its tyranny. 

Cimabue, the alleged master of Giotto, un- 
doubtedly did effective work in the new movement 
by his opposition to the stiff mannerisms of his 
predecessors; but he is probably overrated when 
called "the father of modern painting." 

Giotto, with all his faults, may be ascribed with 
greater accuracy as the precursor of modern paint- 
ers. He managed his dramatic movement with 
some skill; and he evinced artistic ideals. Like 
most of the other Italian masters of his time, he 



n8 Painting 

had command of several arts. He went to Nature 
for his inspiration; and, like Nature, he was imi- 
tated and copied — not always with understanding. 

The story of Giotto's " 0," in Mr. Ruskin's opin- 
ion, whether true or mostly fiction, is somewhat 
indicative of the man's character. Benedict XI., 
it is said, sent a legate "to test Giotto's ability"; 
the courtier requested a specimen of the painter's 
work. " Giotto took a sheet of paper, and a brush 
dipped in red, and firmly pressing his elbow to his 
side so that the lower limb of the arm might act 
as the branch of a compass, he completed with one 
sweep a perfect circle. 'Here is my drawing,' 
said Giotto. 'Am I to have no other than this?' 
replied the courtier, scenting a joke in the manner 
of the artist. ' Enough it is and more than enough ! ' 
was the answer. The Pope, a better judge than 
his envoy, admitted the superiority of Giotto; 
and the story, repeated from mouth to mouth, be- 
came the foundation of a pun on the word tondo. 
For it became common to say of men of dull wit 
or of coarse character, that they were rounder than 
the 'O' of Giotto." {History of Painting, Crowe 
and Cavalcaselle.) 

A study of this man's work reveals that it was 
of nearer kin to the best traits of Giovanni Pisano's 
than to those of Cimabue's. Giovanni had aban- 
doned the elder Pisano's somewhat passive classi- 
cism for the more virile and emotive Gothic. 

Indeed, the genius of Giotto was a flower of the 
Gothic art. This painter did not rely on the 



The Gothic 119 

antique but rather on his own outlook upon his 
surroundings. His work is alive with a love of 
truth, and it thrills with broad and generous sym- 
pathies. It may be said to be the connecting 
link between thirteenth-century classicism and 
painting of the modern era. He cleverly subor- 
dinated his pattern-effects to the narrative of his 
decorative painting ; and thus he was able to make 
his way tactfully between opposing qualities. 
Although poor in colour and weak in light and 
shade, as compared with later work, he was yet 
strong and sure in line, rich in sense of proportion, 
and well balanced in mass-effect. Moreover, he 
showed his artistic breeding, so to speak, in the 
modest self-restraint which avoided overemphasis 
and exaggeration; and his action while always 
graceful could never be called weak. 

With the passing of Giotto, painting suffered 
a temporary eclipse; and the spirit of his work 
seemed to enter that of the sculptor Andrea Pisano, 
whose reliefs in stone and bronze strongly suggest 
certain characteristics of Giotto's paintings. There 
was the same disregard of stupid conventionalities ; 
there was a similar sincerity; the same obvious 
love of beauty is apparent ; and through beauty, a 
like attempt is evident at the expression of emotive 
values. His bronze gates at Florence are perhaps 
the best example of his style. 

The most famous of Giotto's pupils was Andrea 
del Cione, often referred to as "Orcagna." He, 
too, was the master of several arts : being a sculp- 



120 Painting 

tor, a painter, an architect, and a goldsmith. The 
Loggia de' Lanzi in Florence is said to have been 
built from his plans. His is the superb fresco of 
The Last Judgment in S. Maria Novella; and his 
also the richly sculptured Gothic tabernacle of 
Or San Michele at Florence. 

In Siena, Duccio di Buoninsegna paralleled in 
a measure the vibrant work of the Florentines. 
He also rebelled against Byzantine rigidity, put 
some life into his figures, and some structure under 
their garments. His arrangement of draperies 
was artistic; and he expressed emotion in his 
faces; but he seemed unable to cope with the 
requirements of individualism. Among his suc- 
cessors were such men as Taddeo Gaddi and the 
Lorenzetti. 

On the whole, however, the Sienese school was 
rather too metaphysical. It went in so much for 
soul that it failed with the body. It lacked the 
vitality of the Florentine school, and fell by the 
wayside. 

Now we approach with reverence the most lov- 
able painter of them all, Fra Giovanni Angelico 
da Fiesole, whom we like to call simply Fra An- 
gelico. As all the world knows, this thoroughly 
humanized Dominican monk occupies a unique 
position in the history of painting; he was "not 
in the roll of common men." He was not only 
the last and greatest Florentine painter of the 
Gothic period, but he was the first great painter 
of the Early Renaissance. In the words of Rey- 



The Gothic 121 

nolds: "The works of those who have stood the 
tests of ages have a claim to that respect and 
veneration to which no modern can pretend. The 
duration and stability of their fame are sufficient 
to evince that it has not been suspended upon the 
slender thread of fashion and caprice, but bound 
to the human heart by every tie of sympathetic 
approbation." 

The genius of this great Christian painter com- 
bined the noblest elements of the Florentine and 
Sienese schools into one of his own. In his free- 
dom of grouping, his dramatic instincts, his sin- 
cerity, and his inspiration, he suggests Giotto while 
surpassing him and rising above his primitive 
simplicity. Something similar may be said of his 
superiority over the Sienese in his incorporation 
in his work of the best elements of that school. 
He lacked none of the pure and lofty sentiment 
or spiritual depth of emotion while making a 
systematic study of the antique and of nature. 
He approached the human form as a true artist; 
he was first to paint the Christ child naked; the 
first Italian to paint landscapes from nature. 
He used living models for his nudes; he studied 
aerial perspective; and he embodied classical 
elements in his architectural backgrounds. His 
brushes robbed the Hybla bees, and left them 
honeyless. 

Thus did religion at a later period tend to restore 
what it had almost destroyed on the overthrow of 



122 Painting 

Pagan idolatry. For the new-born zeal of the first 
Christians sought to efface every monument of the 
antique religion, throwing down the statues, destroy- 
ing the mosaics and pictures, effacing every memorial, 
and razing the ancient temples, or converting them 
into Christian churches. 

The Church of Rome has favoured the arts in a 
remarkable manner. The ceremonial and decorations 
of the altar have been contrived with great felicity. 
He is insensible to beauty who, being a painter, does 
not there catch ideas of light and shade and colour. 
The Gothic or rich Roman architecture, the carved 
screen, the statues softened by a subdued light, form 
altogether a magnificent scene. The effects of light 
and colour are not matters of accident. The painted 
glass of the high window represents to the superficial 
observer no more than the rich garments of the figures 
painted there. But the combination of colours evinces 
science; the yellows and greens, in due proportion 
with the crimsons and blues, throw beams of an 
autumnal tint among the shafts and pillars, and colour 
the volumes of rising incense. . . . 

In short the priests in their rich habiliments, studi- 
ously arranged for effect, — the costume of the monks 
of the order of St. Francis and the Capucines, — the 
men and women from the country, and the mendicants 
prostrate in the churches, and in circumstances as to 
light and shade, and colour, nowhere else to be seen, — 
have been, and are, the studies of the Italian painters. 
(Sir Charles Bell.) 



CHAPTER XII 

ITALIAN MASTERS, RENAISSANCE 

FLORENCE was the homestead of the Renais- 
sance of Painting ; and the Brancacci Chapel 
might be called its nursery. The frescoes of 
Masaccio have supplied inspiration to many 
generations of painters. His pigments held a kind 
of reflex and flush of dawn which overflowed in 
splendid shadows like spilt wine. 

Masaccio was the first Italian to endow the nude 
with its fuller possibilities of strength and beauty ; 
he clothed his figures with emotion as with rai- 
ment. In composition, he broke away from the 
linear scheme and traditions of relief ; and he put 
his figures where they belonged in the planes of 
the landscape. He invested them with dignity 
and dressed them without stint of material in 
classic grace. In a word, he fulfilled some of the 
promises of Giotto at their best. 

It is interesting to students of the older technic 
to read in Crowe and Cavalcaselle that 

Masaccio used transparent colours, through which 
the white intonaco is visible, particularly in the pic- 
tures of the upper courses. In the lower series his 
123 



124 Painting 

facility is more apparent than elsewhere, the flesh 
lights having more body, the shadows being more 
powerfully glazed, and the execution generally more 
careful. . . . The whole was evidently prepared in 
spacious masses on white ground. Colours of a fluid 
texture were swept over the surface with great speed 
and dexterity. The broad shadows were glazed with 
warm and transparent tones and fused through the 
semitones into equally broad lights. The flesh tints 
thus gained a bright though soft and golden tinge, 
and relief was obtained by the perfect juxtaposition 
of tints rather than by careful minuteness of stippling. 

Masaccio had many followers, — chief amongst 
them was Fra Filippo Lippi, who seems to have 
been more fond of life than of religion. His 
palette was a song: he painted "lips to love with, 
eyes for tears." He preferred to express the sen- 
suous emotions of a robust peasantry rather than 
spiritual ideals such as thrill the work of Fra 
Angelico. Realism, beauty, and joyousness leapt 
from his palette, and were gay. 

Veneziano, fond of naturalism, a fine technician, 
and clever in rendering movement, is said to have 
introduced oil-painting into Italy. Uccello, so- 
called "from his fondness for painting birds," was 
a good animal painter, but an arbitrary colourist; 
he gave much attention to the laws of perspective, 
and impressed himself strongly on his contempo- 
raries. The paintings of all these men, having shak- 
en off church rule, began to tell the story of light 
and laughter, often in the colour of deciduous days. 



Italian Masters, Renaissance 125 

Gozzoli, a follower of Fra Angelico, went to 
contemporary life for the scenes of his frescoes. 
He represented native types, customs, and manners. 
Realizing, as Lord Houghton says, that "a man's 
best things are nearest him, lie close about his 
feet," he sought the nearer truths of nature and 
rendered them with liveliness and charm. Pas- 
sions blew from his mind as winds from the South. 

Botticelli "is the only contemporary whom 
Leonardo da Vinci mentions by name in his treat- 
ise on painting." He shed colour as the grape 
its wine, — both improve by time. His paints are 
sweeter than sleep and softer than summer air. 
He was one of the arts' great masters who made 
light to shudder and burn afresh. This painter 
was steeped in learning, and very naturally he 
had strong leanings toward classic ideals. He 
knew that in painting a man is not necessarily 
on oath; and, as Burke says, we must "pardon 
something to the spirit of liberty." His genius 
was a blend of vague worlds — luminous and gem- 
like — and of a yearning as of winds and waters. 
He was both pagan and Christian; and he used 
his colours chiefly to intensify his decorative lines. 
He was so poetic in his expression of the human 
form, of the rhythm of the dance and of fluttering 
draperies, that in the presence of his pictures one 
feels surrounded by spirits of the golden age. 
The pattern effect of his compositions is fasci- 
nating. 

Filippino, son of the elder Lippi and pupil of 



126 Painting 

Botticelli, possessed many exquisite qualities of 
the real master; but they ran to overdecorative 
effects and too much detail, as is shown by some 
frescoes which he completed in the Brancacci 
Chapel. His colouring was rich and his expression 
fine, — if anything perhaps too dainty. 

Pietro della Francesca was the precursor of 
modern open-air painting with its echoing wood- 
lands, fields of summer grass, and wild winds 
against a stormy cloud. He combined qualities 
of the Umbrian and Florentine schools. He was 
master of glaze and perspective; and he had a 
refined sense of beauty. 

Luca Signorelli, a pupil of Francesca, excelled 
in the expression of strength and action in the 
figures of passionate crowds. Beauty and texture 
of the nude form, especially of the female, escaped 
him. His drawing was rather hard and his colours 
dry. 

Pietro Perugino was typical of the Umbrian 
school; and he was also its greatest master. His 
success in space composition was second only to 
that of his pupil, Raphael. The Umbrians, how- 
ever, never achieved any considerable artistic 
independence. This school at its best was never 
credited as being much more than a reflection or 
modification of the Sienese and Florentine schools. 
It neglected form, line, and movement for ten- 
derness of sentiment and intensity of religious 
expression. 

Pinturicchio, who belonged to the same school, 



Italian Masters, Renaissance 127 

was rather strong in composition ; but he was too 
much inclined toward the love of splendour in 
colouring for the decorative limits of the fresco. 

Squarcione founded the Paduan school on the 
study of Grecian antiques. His greatest pupil 
was Mantegna. This painter was an accom- 
plished antique scholar, whose works were classic 
in style, sculpturesque and noble. Indeed, Man- 
tegna' s frescoes of contemporary life are even 
better than his other productions. This school 
influenced Milanese and Venetian painting in the 
fifteenth century; but the Venetians soon took a 
glorious course of their own. "In no other 
painter's works," says Champlin, "are to be found 
so strange a mixture of classic feeling, realism, 
and science, combined with rare dramatic power 
and intensity of life, as in those of Mantegna." 

The Bellini brothers, Giovanni and Gentile, 
were painting at the dawn of Venetian splendour. 
The flourishing mercantile republic brought forth 
a new style of art. Florence was the soil of human- 
ism; there colour was subordinate to line; and 
the picture, in a sense, was the woven raiment of 
the painter's thought. In Venice all was differ- 
ent. Pomp and luxury were as vibrant as fire 
or the lute-strings of love. There were colour, 
atmosphere, and music. The shudder of water 
was felt by the poet; and the painter knew the 
immeasurable tremor of the sea. Venice de- 
manded of art not the expression of thought and 
knowledge, as such, but rather a sensuous quality 



128 Painting 

which should express in colour the poetry of every- 
day life. And thus the Venetians became the 
first great European school of real colourists. 
With them colour was a living flame, an exalta- 
tion of light, a spirit of wet ways enchanted with 
the dreams of gardens. The Venetians thought 
in colour and studied its appearance in nature, 
its possibilities in art, and its powers in pigment. 
In these things they have not been excelled. It 
has been said that Antonello da Messina brought 
oil-colours to Venice. This is doubtful ; but what 
is certain is that Venice developed the master 
painter, as succeeding ages have understood him, 
in whose technic perhaps no material improvement 
has been made since. 

Gentile Bellini, like Vittore Carpaccio, painted 
processionals of Venetian life. Giovanni's work 
was rather monumental in character. His style 
was dignified, and he essayed the type rather than 
the individual. 

In this remarkable school there were other 
early masters justly famous. I shall mention 
only two more : Carlo Crivelli and Cima da Cone- 
gliano. Carlo's work rivals that of the early 
Flemish masters in careful detail. The altar- 
pieces by Cima are fine and colourful. He touched 
the cold lips of saints with human breath, — mingled 
immortality with death, and made both alive. 

As the fifteenth century was drawing to a close, 
almost every city in Italy had a school of painting, 
and most of them could boast of masters. At the 



Italian Masters, Renaissance 129 

beginning of the sixteenth century, painting had 
become a thoroughly independent art, although 
it still decorated architecture. 

There are certain masters of this period, as of 
others, too well known to be more than casually 
mentioned here, since nothing can be added to 
what all the world knows concerning them. Leo- 
nardo and Raphael belong to this group. 

Leonardo da Vinci was fed on the ''milk of 
every Muse." He belonged to Central Italy; 
and he ushered in the greatest period of Italian 
art. This great epoch witnessed technical mastery, 
classic perfection, and ideal beauty of expression. 
The genius of Leonardo was universal. Two 
centuries of painting were before him; and his work 
incorporated all that was best in what had gone 
before. Even more than that, the unconscious 
processes of his genius perfected the previous good 
qualities of the art and welded them into a per- 
sonal style of his own. He was master of line, 
colour, movement, emotion, pure beauty, strength, 
and tenderness. He endowed the flesh with spirit 
and the spirit with a longing that aspires. In 
his all too few finished works, there were large 
light and no barren tones, for he seemed to draw 
upon the gold of all the season's wealth. 

Raphael's genius was also broadly eclectic and 
capable of making its very own all that was best 
in art. In the words of Johnson: "The true, 
strong, and sound mind is the mind that can em- 
brace equally great things and small." Such was 



130 Painting 

Raphael's. His colours were as soft as fallen 
rain. His work strives with death and grows 
stronger through the years. Music came from 
his brushes; and his palette gave forth a flame 
as of candles on a shrine. It was however in the 
fresco that his genius found full expression; for he 
lacked something in his oils which Correggio had 
in abundance. Unfortunately for the evolution 
of painting, his work has been so long regarded 
as the very acme of perfection by the academic 
teacher and lecturer that it may almost be con- 
sidered as a depressant rather than a stimulus. 

Michael Angelo, the Titan, made the reign of 
Leo X. immortal. He has been called the " Luther 
of the Reformation of Painting"; and his female 
figures have been referred to as the "breeders of 
giants." In fact, he was, first, a sculptor, second, 
a painter, and after that, other marvellous char- 
acters. According to Vasari, he painted but one 
picture in oils, — exclaiming in a mood of disgust 
that the technic was only fit for women and child- 
ren. However that may be, his brushes were as 
vital as the sparks which leapt from his chisel, 
and they reveal the same passionate command of 
the human figure. I do not know the faults in 
his work, but I am often told that it has many. 
His grandeur of design fills my space of conception. 
I can understand, however, that his colour did not 
equal that of Leonardo and the great Venetians. 
His ideal no doubt was sculptural rather than 
pictorial; for his forms shall ever "float about the 



Italian Masters, Renaissance 131 

threshold of an age." The mind staggers beneath 
the visions which he put into shapes and sugges- 
tions and which he liberated in a lordly manner 
upon the illimitable years. 

Fra Bartolommeo and Andrea del Sarto, Floren- 
tine painters of this period, achieved considerable 
renown. Bartolommeo, an ascetic, was perhaps 
only second to Leonardo as the greatest of the 
Florentine school. He did some excellent altar- 
pieces in his early career; but on the whole, it may 
be said, his was a beamless light. There is some- 
thing in his art that makes one feel as though 
sitting alone in a dark cave drinking chill wine. 
Andrea, except for his lack of feeling, leaned to- 
ward the Venetian style with his sense of colour, 
of beauty and grace, and with his good drawing. 

Correggio, of Northern Italy, was the most 
typical master of the late Renaissance. The 
nervous quality of his work has been widely noted. 
His sunlight was filled with floating shades which 
suggest dreams beyond sunset. In a word, his 
work was intensely emotional. 

The pictures of this extraordinary man, though full 
of the most exquisite tones of colour, and the tender- 
est gradations, are never insipid; and though de- 
scending into the most intense depths of shadow, are 
without the least appearance of blackness. These de- 
fects he has avoided by retaining sufficient portions 
of strong, harsh colour, and cutting outline, in many 
parts of the work; nor are the sensations of colour 
ever excluded from his shadows; on the contrary, his 



132 Painting 

greatest darks are full of luminous, warm, and trans- 
parent tones. This rendering of colour subservient 
to the purposes of light and shade, with still greater 
effects of breadth, was carried to perfection by Titian, 
one of the founders of the Venetian school, who, though 
commencing like Correggio with the most delicate tints 
in the masses of light, and excluding darkness from 
his shadows, has extended this principle by combining 
his hot and cold colours in larger portions. (Burnet.) 

Reynolds was a great admirer of Ludovico 
Carracci. In his Discourses he says: 

His unaffected breadth of light and shadow, the 
simplicity of colouring, which, holding its proper 
rank, does not draw aside the least part of the atten- 
tion from the subject, and the solemn effect of that 
twilight which seems diffused over his pictures, ap- 
pear to me to correspond with grave and dignified 
subjects, better than the more artificial brilliancy of 
sunshine which enlightens the pictures of Titian. 

Giorgione was a sixteenth-century master of 
the first rank. His figures fell in with their sur- 
roundings. He was the first of his time to make 
the background a real component part of his 
picture. He was an idealist of great imagination. 

The true artist must be enough of the philo- 
sopher to see Nature in the abstract as she stands 
revealed through law. In rendering the ideal, he 
represents Nature in her most perfect state. 
Nature, for example, makes no two oaks exactly 
alike; and yet all oaks conform to a central, organic 



Italian Masters, Renaissance 133 

plan. If one were to draw an ideal oak he would 
have to know this central plan which conforms 
to a composite drawing of all oaks. Thus the 
province of art is to understand this central design 
of things. And this is what Giorgione did. The 
work of Palma, one of his contemporaries, was 
deeply influenced by his example. Palma excelled 
as a painter of women, — of bodies blushing with 
life, and veins that hesitate with gracious blue. 

Titian, of course, stood at the head of Venetian 
painting. He garnered the very quintessence of 
colour with a kind of fierce reluctance. He 
painted mysteries of the fervid will, slain laughter 
and wind-blown hair, and woman with just a hint 
of floral sadness in her smile. He had overcome 
the perplexities of his art, and as a colourist, per- 
haps, he has never been surpassed. The greatest 
Tuscans did not excel him in composition, and 
few equalled him in the expression of emotion or 
the rhythm of line. In portraiture he ranks with 
Rembrandt and Velasquez. 

In the latter part of the sixteenth century, 
Tintoretto and Veronese upheld the great tradi- 
tions of the Venetian school. Tintoretto's motto 
was: "The design of Michael Angelo, the colour of 
Titian." He was master of the human form, of 
light and shade, and colour he made to sing with 
lips of flame. 

Of all the extraordinary geniuses that have practised 
the art of painting, for wild, capricious, extravagant, 



134 Painting 

and fantastical inventions, for furious impetuosity 
and boldness in the execution of his work, there is 
none like Tintoretto; his strange whimsies are even 
beyond extravagance, and his works seem to be pro- 
duced rather by chance, than in consequence of any 
previous design, as if he wanted to convince the world 
that the art was a trifle, and of the most easy attain- 
ment. (Vasari.) 

Emerson says: "By necessity, by proclivity, 
and by delight, we all quote." Let us say there- 
fore, in the words of Johnson, that, "Whatever is 
done skilfully appears to be done with ease; and 
Art, when it is once matured to habit, vanishes 
from observation." 

Veronese was strong in composition and an 
expert in the mechanical part of his art; and he 
too had a mind of many colours. He rioted in 
figures, in processions, in miracles, and in martyr- 
doms. Unfortunately, he directed his efforts 
more to surface gorgeousness than to the illumi- 
nation of deeper significances. 

Canaletto, the elder, stood at the head of a new 
genre which appeared toward the end of the seven- 
teenth century. He was an objective painter of 
architecture and detail, while handling massed 
light and shade successfully. Francesco Guardi 
chose similar motifs, but was broader; his atmo- 
sphere was truer and his tones more silvery than 
those of Canaletto. 

Tiepolo was the last of the Venetian masters 
who, agreeable to the demands of his time, painted 



Italian Masters, Renaissance 135 

in the style of florid splendour. His work was 
mostly decorative; and although he was a great 
colourist, he lacked ideas. 

If God should deign to speak to a painter, He 
would probably quote Thessalonians and say, 
"Study to be quiet" 



CHAPTER XIII 

PAINTING IN THE NORTH 

NO one seems to know when oil-painting was 
introduced into Northern Europe. Deco- 
rative oil-work was done in England as early, 
surely, as the eleventh century. Long before 
that, Aetius, a medical author writing in the year 
500 a.d., recommends nut-oil as an ingredient 
used in the processes of gilding and encaustic 
painting, for the reason that when the oil dries it 
leaves a protective coat over the painting. Vir- 
tually ever since that time both varnishes and 
drying-oils have been used more or less in the 
processes of painting. 

The Lucca MS., written three or four hundred 
years after the time of Aetius, contains "a recipe 
for a transparent varnish composed of linseed oil 
and resin." A book called De Arte Pingendi, 
written by Theophilus, a ninth-century monk, 
gives careful directions for a method of grinding 
pigments in linseed oil for painting on wooden 
panels which are to be dried in the sun. For the 
final coat he suggests a varnish composed of the 
gum of sandarac which has been boiled in linseed 
136 



Painting in the North 137 

oil. In a contemporary work by Heraclius, 
called Be Artibus Romanorum, it is said that oil 
paintings may be dried either in the sun or by 
artificial heat. In addition, a method is given 
wherein the oxid of lead used as a dryer is mixed 
with the oil. R. E. Raspe published these MSS. in 
a small quarto volume, with notes and comments, 
in the year 1781. The edition was small; and I 
do not believe that the book has been reprinted 
in its original form. Copies are rare. 

There is now little doubt that oil-painting has 
been carried on sporadically since the tenth cen- 
tury, although the technic evidently was very 
imperfect. The Strassburg MS. of the four- 
teenth or fifteenth century contains a well-known 
recipe for oil-colours. Oil from linseed, hemp- 
seed, or the nut was boiled with some such dryer 
as the sulphate of zinc. After a process of bleach- 
ing in the sun the mixture becomes "a thick con- 
sistence . . . transparent as fine crystal. And 
this oil dries very fast, and makes all colours 
beautifully clear and glossy besides. All painters 
are not acquainted with it: from its excellence it 
is called oleum preciosum, since half an ounce is 
well worth a shilling, and with this oil all colours 
are to be ground and tempered." In the finishing 
process of the picture a little varnish is added. 

Cennino Cennini wrote a treatise on oils in 
which the oft-quoted technic of the Giotto school 
is given. The process was to bleach linseed oil 
in the sun, after which it was mixed with liquid 



138 Painting 

varnish in the proportion of one ounce of varnish 
to one pound of oil. The pigments were then 
ground in this medium. The author adds: 
"When you would paint a drapery with the three 
gradations, divide the tints and place them each 
in its position with your brush of squirrel hair, 
fusing one colour with another so that the pig- 
ments are thickly laid. Then wait certain days, 
come again and see how the paint covers, and 
repaint where needful. And in this way paint 
flesh or anything you please, and likewise moun- 
tains, trees, and anything else." Cennino also 
tells of combining the technics of oil and a tempera 
in the same work. Some authors believe this to 
have been the famous Van Eyck method. 

Alberti in 1450 writes of "a new discovery of 
laying on colours with oil of linseed so that they 
resist for ever all injuries from weather and 
climate." Filarete a little later wrote on the 
same subject; and the contributions of Vasari 
along the same line are even more widely known. 
In discussing the Van Eyck technic, he says that 
the brothers invented a varnish that "lit up the 
colours so powerfully that it gave a gloss of itself." 
We know now, however, that the "invention" 
long antedated the Van Eyck period. The Van 
Eycks probably did no more than improve the 
technic, thereby bringing out some of its latent 
artistic powers. 

Although Hubert Van Eyck is given the credit 
of having been the first great painter in oils, he 



Painting in the North 139 

really stands second to Giovanni Bellini, who was 
first to realize the fuller possibilities of this method 
in his masterly balancing and contrasting of 
opaque and transparent colours. It was Bellini 
who made Titian possible. 

Generally, it is the opinion of competent author- 
ities, among whom may be mentioned Maximilian 
Toch, Ernest Berger, and William Ostwald, that 
the use of oil-colours in artistic painting was "a 
gradual development" rather than "a sudden 
discovery." 

The Van Eyck process, so often and erroneously 
mentioned as marking the introduction of oils, 
was most likely an oil-tempera. For there are 
many reasons for suspecting that the Van Eyck 
brothers, while admittedly using oils, did not 
confine their work to one method. At all events, 
precisely what the earliest process was either in 
Northern or Southern Europe is not known today. 
But in the beginning of the fifteenth century, 
Hubert and Jan Van Eyck were painting virtually 
in oils. And, whatever the cause, the technic of 
Flemish painting passed through rapid develop- 
ment until it reached its highwater-mark during 
the opulent period of Flanders. 

The Van Eycks painted at Bruges and at Ghent. 
Their mediaeval symbolism, precise and minute 
work in the scenes which surrounded them, are 
well known. "In the twenty years," says Fro- 
mentin, "the human mind, represented by these 
two men, had found, in painting, the most ideal 



140 Painting 

expression of faces, not the noblest, certainly, but 
the first correct manifestation of bodies in their 
exact forms, the first picture of the sky, of the 
air, of clothes, of the country, of external richness, 
by means of true colours; it had created a living 
art, invented or perfected its mechanism, deter- 
mined its language, and produced imperishable 
works." 

Rogier Van der Weyden was not quite so liberal 
and a little more emotional than the Van Eycks. 
He founded the school of Brabant which gave him 
considerable prestige among his contemporaries. 

Hans Memling of Bruges, pupil of Van der 
Weyden, did rare things for his time and school. 
He was poetic in feeling, and successful in his pic- 
tures of women, some of which show remarkable 
grace of character. Eugene Fromentin, speaking 
of Saints Catherine and Barbara, says: "Had 
Memling painted but these two figures ... we 
might almost say that he would have done enough 
to ensure his fame in the first place and, above 
all, to cause astonishment in those who are pre- 
occupied with certain problems and delight at 
seeing them solved. Considering only the form, 
the perfect drawing, the natural gesture without 
pose, the clearness of the complexions, the satin- 
like softness of the skin, its smoothness and sup- 
pleness; considering the garments in their rich 
colours, in their very right physiognomic cut, we 
might well say that it was nature itself, observed 
by an admirably sensitive and sincere eye." 



Painting in the North 141 

Some of his landscapes are fine ; several of them 
abound in sleeping greens and express a spirit of 
serene and holy peace. 

Gerard David, also of Bruges, was influenced by 
Memling but surpassed him in the sense of glow- 
ing colour and in a finer perception of line. An un- 
derstream of colour shines through his best work. 

Quentin Matsys, in the latter part of the fif- 
teenth century, was painting portraits, genre and re- 
ligious works, showing a decided advance in expres- 
sion and modelling. "His style, which marks the 
close of the early Flemish school and inaugurates 
a new period, is distinguished by more independ- 
ence of thought and greater artistic freedom than 
that of any previous painter in the Low Countries, 
excepting the Van Eycks" — (Champlin). 

The work of Mabuse, and especially that of 
Bernard Van Orley, reveals signs of Italian influ- 
ence, which was already beginning to modify 
slightly Flemish art. Until the advent of Rubens, 
however, the Italian influence produced little 
more than mannerisms in Flemish painting. 

Nothing now remains to be said of Rubens and 
his work. The master belongs to the world. It 
is only for form's sake that he is referred to in 
passing. 

As a colourist, Rubens was a Venetian in his 
early career; but in time his individuality and 
virility made him more. He mastered, then 
seemed to defy, the laws of art in obeying them. 
He painted human flesh as no one before him had 



142 Painting 

done and as few since have equalled. He caught 
the smile of Nature's "myriad nakednesses," and 
he smote his canvas with a mellow light that melts 
in many streams. He loved the texture of skin, 
and he made the flesh beneath it alive with pulsing 
blood. His movement was passionate, and his 
style dramatic; it had the rhythm of large grace 
and of sure confidence. And while his sensuous- 
ness has the air of spontaneity guided by chance, 
it will bear careful checking by the scientific 
method. He massed his amplitudes of light and 
shade in seeming abandon, and yet, so far as I 
can recall, they always balance. His power over 
luminous colour, his success in portraiture, genre, 
landscape, animal painting, imagination, and feel- 
ing, all stand forth in amazing array, — an enduring 
evidence of the man's superb genius. 

Rubens' greatest pupil was Van Dyck, who, 
as Court painter to Charles I., virtually founded 
the English school of portraiture. Van Dyck, 
like his master, had studied in Italy and like him 
had imbibed the Venetian spirit. As a colourist, 
he was not so vigorous and virile as Rubens, but 
more subtle and refined. His shadows, artfully 
flanked with light, flood the soul with a subdued 
sense of beauty. His pictures of English aristo- 
cracy are justly famous, and they are said to be 
true to the life of his times. 

Jacob Jordaens must be mentioned as a great 
technician; and he may be commended for his 
good humour while excused for his coarseness. 



Painting in the North 143 

Franz Snyders excelled as an animal painter, — 
Jan Fyt and Jan Weenix in the painting of still- 
life: mostly dead game. Hondekoeter revelled 
in fowls and barnyards. All were fine colourists, 
and as great as they could be in the narrow limits 
set by each for himself. 

In the beginning, there were scarcely any differ- 
ences between the Flemish and Dutch schools. 
The Van Eyck brothers dominated both at the 
start; while Bouts and Van Ley den seem to have 
made no attempt to break away from the influence 
of the Flemings. 

It was only after the Reformation and the War 
of Independence at the middle of the seventeenth 
century, when Spain had lost her hold on the Low 
Countries and victorious peace had settled over 
Holland, that her great period of art began. Up 
to this time her best art had been rather sporadic, 
and the best examples had emanated from more 
or less isolated sources. 

The conventional religious pictures were not 
popular in Protestant Holland. Painters no 
longer felt "the mission of the Cross." The old 
Dutchmen did not relish the pious fruit with the 
bitter kernel in it. And as the church seemed to 
get on well enough with whitewashed walls, the 
secular world began to demand paintings. The 
home and the public hall drew to their walls por- 
traits of almost dead perfection with pearls of 
light peeping out of voiceless gloom; landscapes 
with skies wrapt in clouds; and large group pic- 



144 Painting 

tures representing mild civic tumult and incidents 
in the life of the burghers. 

The Dutch imagination was not hungry for 
idealism, nor were the Dutchmen deeply apprecia- 
tive of nature; they seemed to have no longing for 
clamorous vales, clear air and wind and waters 
flowing. They were satisfied with richness of 
quality, a subtle play of light and shade, and with 
a delicacy of texture in the work of their painters. 
Homely little glimpses of the life they knew ap- 
pealed to them ; they liked the little tavern-scenes, 
the rectangular compositions, and snatches of life 
from amongst the humbler classes. 

As a result of the requirements of the general 
taste, the Dutch painters of this period were 
superb ornamental craftsmen rather than first- 
rate artist-painters. Of such were Ternberg, 
Vermeer van Deft, Metzu, Jan Steen, Mieris, 
Gerard Dow, and others, as for example, Teniers 
of Flanders, who really belonged to this group of 
Dutch "small masters." And although they are 
called "small masters," yet they developed mar- 
vellous technic which they enriched with precious 
gemlike qualities. 

Frans Hals was the great emancipator of the 
spirit of brush-work ; he was as bold as a brigand — ■ 
as brilliant and dashing a painter of portraits as 
ever lived. He spent no time on sweet saints, 
avoided symphonies of flame and "poets' seasons 
when they flower"; but in the most admirable 
fashion he dealt directly with the world he knew 



Painting in the North 145 

and understood so well. There was no room within 
his work for barren lights and wastes of dolorous 
fancies. He could have painted the very noise of 
thunder. 

Van der Heist followed him as a capable por- 
trait painter, — very conscientious, who was a 
little tight in his pictures of civic dignitaries and 
their fleshy wives. 

Rembrandt in many respects is regarded as 
the greatest master of them all. He cared little 
for linear design and everything for lights and 
shadows. He had perfect control of golden 
half-tones and liquid shadows; and he handled 
surrounding atmosphere as never had been 
done before. His contrasts may sometimes put 
a strain on nature; but they never burden the 
credulity of the beholder who, in his right mind, 
never doubts anything that the master did. He 
wooed character with singular fidelity, and he 
usually won somewhat more than the merest 
smile of beauty. 



CHAPTER XIV 

CIS-RHINISH PAINTING 

DURING parts of the eleventh and twelfth 
centuries, Rhineland was a great European 
centre of artistic production. From the middle of 
the twelfth to the beginning of the fourteenth 
century, the Gothic movement in France main- 
tained its ascendancy. To the middle of the 
twelfth century, German art excelled in mediaeval 
wall- and panel-painting of the Romanesque style. 
Simple in pictorial effect, it was nevertheless ex- 
cellent in composition and fine as decorative paint- 
ing. Gradually, the Romanesque lost some of 
its stiffness and took on some of the telling graces 
of animation. As early as the first decades of the 
thirteenth century, German painting showed 
pleasing effects of the Gothic influence; at the 
same time it kept its own character while adhering 
to a high decorative style which, if conventional, 
was still in keeping with the well-known principles 
of mural painting. Third dimensional problems 
were mostly ignored; but the drawing was happy, 
and sometimes the facial expression was almost 
Gothic in its limning. 

146 



Cis-Rhinish Painting 147 

At the beginning of the fourteenth century, 
the Gothic influence was unmistakable although 
the technic was largely of outline and flat tints 
with little or no regard to modelling or perspec- 
tive. On the whole, however, both colouring and 
decorative effects were good. 

As the Gothic movement spread in the North, 
the architectural designs reduced the wall space, 
and, as a consequence, mural painting gave way 
to stained-glass windows and panel-painting. 

The origin of panel-painting is not precisely 
known. Reference is made to this form of art in 
the chapter on Greek painting. The painting of 
panels, we know, flourished in Byzantium in the 
eleventh century; it later spread over Europe, 
notably during the revival of painting in the thir- 
teenth century. At various times in its history, 
the painted panel served as an integral part of 
architectural design; but it gradually became de- 
tached, and finally it was regarded as a separate 
work of art, thus giving rise to the modern easel- 
picture. 

Some of the earliest known examples of panel 
painting in Germany are twelfth-century West- 
phalian. Later, this style of work became general 
in the North Rhinish countries. The painters' 
guild of Prague and the school of Cologne devel- 
oped it still further in the fourteenth century. 
Wilhelm and Wynrich of Cologne, and especially 
the Van Eycks, carried this manner of art down 
virtually to our modern form of easel painting. 



148 Painting 

Lochner, in the fifteenth century, is said to have 
originated the "Dombild" which was one of the 
notorious ancestors of Germany's later brood of 
deformities in art. For while the early Cologne, 
and more especially the early Flemish, painters 
were able to endow their accurate representations 
of fact with poetic feeling and idyllic charm, the 
fifteenth-century Germans achieved principally 
contortion and caricature; they struggled to por- 
tray force and succeeded in expressing ugliness. 
The national insensibility to truth and beauty hung 
like a pall over German art ; and there the gloomy 
pall has remained ever since, pierced and illum- 
inated now and then by exceptional artists such 
as Schongauer, who reached out to the Flemish 
Netherlands for his ideals, and others such as 
Dtirer, Holbein the younger, Grunewald, and 
Bruyn. 

M. Reinach, in summing up German painting 
of the fifteenth century, says : " Italian art dreamed 
of beauty and realized its dream. Flemish art 
was in love with truth, and held the mirror up to 
Nature. German art rarely achieved either truth 
or beauty. But it succeeded in rendering, with a 
fidelity that was often brutal, the character of the 
German people immediately before and after the 
Reformation." 

Whether the spirit of art is alien to the Teutonic 
temperament, or whether that temperament re- 
quires an art of its own which is not properly appre- 
ciated by other peoples, are questions hardly worth 



Cis-Rhinish Painting 149 

while. This much, however, seems to be evident : 
In following the art of painting down the ages, 
one finds that the German phenomenon forms no 
shining link in the golden chain. 

Individual German painters have, from time 
to time, done fine things; but it seems that their 
achievements have been despite their Teutonic 
instincts rather than because of them. 

If the German character were less robust in its 
brutality, and just a trifle more sensitive to its 
glaring defects, there would be something pathetic 
and almost splendid in the spiritual isolation of 
this people from the brotherhood of man. 

It is very difficult indeed to sympathize with a 
doughty outlaw who gloats with satisfaction over 
the most inhuman of crimes, and who seems to 
be sincere in the belief that revolting atrocities 
are righteous, if only they be committed by him- 
self. The most shocking sin loses some of its 
horror through repentance; and it gains an ele- 
ment which evokes loathing contempt when it 
adds vulgar swagger to infamy. Even artistic 
atrocities may be forgiven if the perpetrators do 
not try to force them on the world. Unfortu- 
nately, such seems to be the character of this peo- 
ple, — certainly such must be the interpretation of 
history. 

Soulfulness is not one of the heritages of the 
Germans; but the gods have been generous with 
them in other ways. Whereas, so indefinable a 
thing as spirituality has been denied them, they 



150 Painting 

have been given more than much that is antithet- 
ical. They have been well endowed with a boring 
or rooting persistency of mind unhampered by 
finesse or scruple in the cleverest of subterranean 
plagiarism; they have been blessed with strong 
stomachs capable of converting sausages and 
sauerkraut into " f rightfulness " as well as into 
engines of destruction; they have been fortified 
by an instinct which, if incapable of sublime pas- 
sion, still succeeds abundantly in bringing forth 
more litters of the same; and nature has provided 
them with the armour of calloused areas which 
are sensitive spots in civilized beings; and nature 
has also given them a colossal conceit which blinds 
them to their own monstrous deformities of soul. 
This overmastering conceit has been tolerably 
evident in their conduct of war-measures; and it 
is hardly less evident when they devote themselves 
to the peaceful arts, if it may be said that as a 
people they ever did seriously and single-heartedly 
so devote themselves. 

In all this, the gods have been generous to the 
Germans; and to all this the German national 
character, as revealed by recent conduct, virtually 
pleads thus at the Court of Civilization : Spiritual 
development is all right for ethereal beings in heaven; 
but in this world, those who can best raise hell can 
best clean out the trough. You are welcome to 
honour's iridescent froth I Give us the thick swill, 
and after the feed and glut, "a place in the sun"! 

Civilization cannot answer this by argument; 



Cis-Rhinish Painting 151 

the logic is Teutonic; the ethics is Prussian; it 
harmonizes with cis-Rhinish ideals; it squares 
with exigency or "necessity" which is not handi- 
capped by decency; and, according to the gospel 
of St. Wilhelm, it is sweet and perfect. 

And yet whatever may be thought of some of 
the more offensive and unfortunate characteristics 
of this people, and however much one may repro- 
bate their callous and cruel conduct, one must 
after all be just to them; and the civilized portion 
of mankind can well afford to be generous in re- 
cognizing their virtues and accomplishments since 
they are so recently acquired when measured by 
the slow epochs of ethnological development. 

As to the art of this people, there is not much 
more to be said. Local schools of painting were 
flourishing from the Upper to the Lower Rhine as 
early as the fourteenth century. Yet in all fair- 
ness, most of the work of these schools may be dis- 
missed as funny caricatures which were gravely 
and innocently committed. The German's sense 
of humour, like his imagination, is not pronounced. 
The majority of these early painters were utterly 
lacking in the sentiment and delicacy of their 
Flemish contemporaries, and also in the beauty 
and ideality of the South. The schools were all 
headed away from art and contrary to "the 
broad approach of fame"; and only a grievous 
exaggeration, for the most part, rewarded their 
melancholy efforts. 

Albrecht Durer stands out among his kind as a 



152 Painting 

glimmering arm might rise above a heap of Ger- 
man carrion, now rotting in the sun along the 
Marne. And yet this great man of Nuremberg 
never approximated the pure beauty common to 
the work of so many of his Italian contemporaries. 

At his best, Durer was an expression of the Ger- 
manized Renaissance which, if anything, was 
intellectual rather than artistic. He embodied 
in his work a dramatic intensity and a seriousness 
of purpose which are always commendable, and 
which he was able to express very simply and 
directly. His mastery of texture and detail is in 
accord with the Teutonic temperament at its most 
efficient level. He could tell a story in the techni- 
cal language of his craftsmanship with the truth- 
fulness of a child; and in these things he was the 
greatest German of all times; but as a true artist 
his fame has never been considerable outside the 
realm of patriotic appreciation. 

Hans Holbein measured up more nearly to the 
standards erected by art. His genius was like a 
colourful flower in the midst of sage-green weeds. 
And this was because his sense of beauty was ex- 
ceptional to the taste of his people ; and because he 
was exceptional to his countrymen of that time in 
his capacity for learning composition from the 
Italians. He succeeded in developing a style of 
his own which was free from the depression of 
uniform German ugliness. And the marvel of it 
all is that despite his native proclivities for depict- 
ing minute detail, he showed a broad sympathy and 



Cis-Rhinish Painting 153 

he manifested a deep insight into character. As 
Court painter to Henry VIII., whatever German 
nature he had became modified by some human 
nature; moreover his work justifies his evident 
self-confidence in its sound basis of "sureness of 
touch and expressiveness of line." As an artist 
he is superior to Durer, and only second to him as 
a craftsman. He was always enough the artist 
to subordinate his wealth of detail to the theme 
of his picture, and to make his accessories serve 
as emphasis; and he was philosopher enough to 
know that usually "truth hath a quiet breast." 



CHAPTER XV 

PAINTING IN FRANCE 

A STRANGE wave spread over Northern 
Europe about the middle of the twelfth 
century. We call it Gothic art. It seems to have 
arisen from the subconscious ideals of a wonderful 
people ; and it was set in motion by their intellec- 
tual activity. 

Starting from the lie de France, it inundated 
a large part of Europe with the spirit of new 
thought and with a sympathetic feeling for natu- 
ralistic ideals which gradually crystallized into 
imperishable works of art. 

For nobility of artistic creation, this wavelike 
movement reached a height that has not been sur- 
passed on earth. It piled great masses of stone 
into complex and airy architectural monuments 
of almost perfect design; and it decorated them 
with splendid traceries which grow more beautiful 
with time; and it put sumptuous colour in the 
windows which glow as with the very light of 
heaven. These massive cathedral piles were en- 
riched with statues of pure dignity; dull, cold 
stone was made to give forth a grace that previ- 
154 



Painting in France 155 

ously had been thought was possible only to the 
warmth and bloom of life ; chiselled rock seemed to 
thrill with aesthetic ardour as it reflected the spirit 
of the age — the cosmic soul of the French people. 

This movement marked one of the most humane 
epochs in history: an epoch which interpreted 
Nature with tenderness as it lovingly learned at 
her knee the lessons which are beautiful and good. 
Ornamentation was modelled from growing things 
so that it suggested their vital and dynamic powers. 
It was an era ignorant of the old classic spirit; 
but it discovered in Central France and elsewhere 
a new, strange spirit which was destined to become 
classic. 

This tidal wave which culminated in certain of 
the more pronounced expressions of aesthetic taste 
and power, affected all the arts more or less pro- 
foundly, painting among the others. And as the 
great wave receded leaving landmarks which 
ever since have been the marvel of man, various 
other phenomena in the art-life of this people be- 
came more apparent. These are associated more 
particularly with individuals and schools. 

With regard to painting, Janet, as Francois 
Clouet, the younger, is better known, was one 
of the world's greatest miniature painters. His 
work bears some traces of Van Eyck; and in his 
style there is often a suggestion of Holbein; but 
there is always enough left of his own individuality 
to offset any foreign tendency. 

The foremost representative of French paint- 



156 Painting 

ing in the fifteenth century was perhaps Jehan 
Foucquet, the illuminator. He not only stood at 
the head of the Italo-Flemish school of miniature 
painting, but he was successful in larger works. 
Jean Cousin, a contemporary of Janet, was a noted 
painter of glass, a miniaturist, an engraver, and a 
sculptor. His talents seem to have been purely 
French, and to have escaped foreign influences. 

The Fontainebleau school was probably a dead- 
weight to the development of French painting, — 
surely, it never acted as an accelerator. This 
school, so called, was indirectly founded by Francis 
I., who in 1 53 1 imported some second-rate paint- 
ers from Italy to decorate his castle at Fontaine- 
bleau. This stimulated a clique of local painters 
to affect pseudo-Italian mannerisms, which how- 
ever were ineffective, and their work was ephem- 
eral. 

Early in the seventeenth century, a few native 
artists showed some feeble originality of concep- 
tion; but for the most part they were influenced 
by the technic of their Dutch contemporaries and 
by the sombre colours of the Spanish. The Le 
Nain brothers are conspicuous in this group. 

Nicolas Poussin had studied in Rome, and 
returned to head the Classicists' movement in 
France. The Eternal City was regarded at that 
time as the source of all art. Poussin had learned 
much from Michael Angelo and Raphael, and even 
more from the antique. He became more classic 
than the Classicists themselves. He thought 



Painting in France 157 

and painted in the language of ancient statues. 
His style was epic; and his figures, as a result of 
his intemperance for the antique, were little more 
than coloured translations of the old reliefs. His 
faulty vision of life, movement, and emotion inter- 
fered with his artistic expression of these things. 
He subordinated nature to his notions of art, 
and thus he neglected colour and atmosphere in 
his landscapes while striving, often successfully, 
for nobility of arrangement, dignity, and power of 
linear perspective. His soul lingered in ages past, 
and his brushes were rather too much engaged 
with ancient fables and with the personification 
of lakes and rivers. At first, his works were dry 
and simple; but later in his career he changed to a 
more fluid manner which produced richer effects. 
Gaspard Poussin, his adopted son, was a little 
less severe of line and he had a truer conception of 
light and air in his landscapes. 

"Beholding the bright countenance of truth 
in the quiet and still of delightful studies," Claude 
Lorrain has been called the discoverer of sunlight. 
His power over the problems of light and air was 
remarkable. He did not however regard un- 
adorned nature as a worthy subject of the painter, 
and therefore relied strongly on architectural 
features. His natural bent was toward "Arcadian 
scenes and fairy lands." Still, he rescued the 
treatment of clouds, trees, and rivers from the 
conventionalities of art; and he had a fine appre- 
ciation of the varying effects of light on different 



158 Painting 

objects and at different hours of the day. He is 
justly famous, not alone on his own account, but 
because he was the spiritual progenitor, across two 
centuries, of the wonderful Turner. 

Burnet and Murray, in discussing Claude's 
technic, say: "His glazings are more painted into 
with greys and green tones of a tender hue, which 
render his masses of shadow less harsh, and give a 
greater appearance of magnitude." This is one 
of the best methods with which to dispel all garish- 
ness from colour. But Lorrain was also master of 
the scumble and knew where to retouch without 
disturbing his broad effects. This is noticeable in 
his clouds which carry so well the strong shadows. 

Charles Lebrun, pupil of Poussin, became Court 
painter to Louis XIV., and therefore the autocrat 
of the art of his day. Painting was in rapid de- 
cline, with only a few men, such as Mignard and 
Rigaud, painting fairly good portraits. 

Antoine Watteau had a tenderness for colour 
and a taste for festal hours which he filled with a 
drowsy cadence drunk with flowers. He was at 
the head of painting in France during the ' ' Rococo ' ' 
period. His Fetes galantes are celebrated for 
sensuousness and a precious quality of colour and 
for a convincing spirit of naturalness. He managed 
light and atmosphere rather sweetly; and he ar- 
ranged his scenes with no uncertain taste, but 
always with an air of refinement. His work is 
largely lyric and quite free from classic influence. 

Lancret and Pater followed in the art's down- 



Painting in France 159 

ward dip which, although lissom and laughterful, 
was too often drunk with the voluptuous morbi- 
desse of Louis XV.'s Court. The life of the Court 
at this time found its fullest expression in the work 
of Francois Boucher. It was the period par ex- 
cellence when they knew how to paint "the world, 
the flesh, and the devil," to quote from the Litany. 

Although this was a period of degeneracy in 
painting, the art was still capable of great decora- 
tive charm and of no mean beauty. Boucher is 
chiefly remembered as the "Painter of the Graces," 
and as the master of Fragonard. 

Fragonard was a painter of fine qualities who 
was very successful in nudes. He was the con- 
necting link between a period of lascivious, seduc- 
tive degeneracy and that of the ugly tumult of the 
Revolution. 

Chardin and Greuze for the most part reflected 
a wholesomer life of the people. Following the 
Revolution, and the fall of Court power, the art 
of France flowed in new channels. The artists 
began to recognize not only the rules of their art, 
but the imperative necessity of obedience to them. 



CHAPTER XVI 

PAINTING IN SPAIN 

IN Spain, painting was conceived under difficul- 
ties and imprisoned at birth. Conditions in 
that country have never been favourable to its 
growth. Lying is the sole art that could thrive 
under the iron rule of the Church during the 
Spanish Inquisition. Painting was not only en- 
slaved by the Church, but it was handicapped by 
the very character of the people, whose stupid 
pride, unhuman dignity, idiotic reserve, and sombre 
attitude toward life were reflected in art as in a 
mirror. The Flemish masters of the fifteenth 
century had no lively influence on it; and Italy 
failed to sweeten it in the sixteenth century. 

Borgofia and Berreguete, toward the end of the 
fifteenth century, were among the first to intro- 
duce the Italian technic. Under Charles V. and 
Philip II., the Italian method took firmer hold, 
but the spirit and the colour remained local; 
that is to say, sombre and heavy. Morales, 
Campana, and Vargas made ineffectual attempts 
at freedom; but they only succeeded in gaining a 
certain dramatic intensity, strength, and boldness. 
1 60 



Painting in Spain 161 

They were never widely known outside their own 
country. 

Toward the end of the sixteenth century a school 
arose at Seville. Pacheco, the teacher of Velas- 
quez, painted here more or less indifferently. Juan 
de las Roelas and the elder Herrera were strong 
enough to introduce some of the fine colouring of 
the Venetians into the sad shadows called Spanish 
painting. Zurbaran added emotion, dramatic 
intensity, and other pleasing qualities of form and 
line. El Greco lost both emotional and mental 
balance in seeking artistic freedom. He painted 
nightmares very well indeed, and shapes that 
are deaf to an earthly call. There was a worm 
"in the bud of his youth, and at the root of his 
age." 

Velasquez was a phenomenon. Like all other 
supreme geniuses, he belonged to no country and 
to no age, but equally to all. He endowed art 
with new vision and new skill. With the fewest 
of colours he gave broken-tone values of the widest 
range. He incorporated the essentials without 
unduly slighting the subordinate features of his 
work, which was borne on "the full tide of suc- 
cessful experiment." As a rational impressionist, 
he carried his effects to the exact limits of his art. 
He caught the soul in its real body; and he was 
never blinded by the miserable mannerisms of 
affectation. He was the master of harmony and 
of technic; and so clever was he that he made his 
hardest work when done seem as spontaneous as 



162 Painting 

a dream. It is said that he painted as one labour- 
ing at a loom. True art produces laboriously, but 
it suggests no effort in the finished piece. It 
sweeps away all sense of duty and converts obli- 
gation into pleasure. This master was superb 
not only in colour but also in composition and 
general space arrangements. There was nothing 
about him of low ambition or the thirst of praise. 
He was a man as well as a painter. 

Murillo is always associated with Velasquez, 
by the principle of contrast, perhaps. He was a 
good colourist, in a way, a good Catholic, a good 
draughtsman. But Murillo's limitations were 
very narrow, his inspiration colourless and insipid, 
and his ideas only varnish-deep. He added no- 
thing to his art. Compared with Velasquez he is 
mediocre, with most other Spanish painters, he is 
great, — which illustrates again the truth of Du 
Bartas: "And swans seem whiter if swart crowes 
be by." 

Ribera was schooled by the Italian naturalists, 
but without much profit. He could never rid 
himself of his ecstatic passion nor of the sombre 
shadows of his native country. His subjects 
generally are hostile to the principles and ideals 
of art. 

Goya, great as he was as a painter, was even 
greater as a satirist whose fearless work was a 
power for the general good. After the death of 
Velasquez and Murillo, Spanish art was on the 
toboggan slide, — and it seems to be going yet. 



Painting in Spain 163 

About the only relief it has had was through the 
versatile genius of Goya, but even he could not 
sustain it long. At his best, he was a close second 
to Velasquez; indeed, through him Velasquez is 
linked to Manet and his times. 



CHAPTER XVII 

LANDSCAPE PAINTING 

LANDSCAPE painting is virtually a modern 
art. Although its perfect flowering belongs 
to our own epoch, its growth may be traced back 
to very early times. Apart from the records left 
by ancient authorities on art, there are now extant 
a number of worthy examples of landscape from 
the walls of Pompeii and Rome. Some of them 
are remarkable for their atmospheric effects and 
suggestions of space, and as well for their happy 
handling of light and shade. As in late mediaeval 
landscapes, the figures are well forward and sub- 
ordinate. During the Augustan Age there were 
masters of the art. The garden pictures of Ludius, 
for instance, in the Livia villa are justly renowned. 
Pliny has made the name of this painter familiar 
to us by praising his work. 

Beginning on this side the mists: crude concep- 
tions of landscape took form with Giotto and 
slowly developed down the centuries, scattering 
the "living flowers that skirt the eternal frost," 
as Coleridge says. With possibly rare exceptions, 
none of the "Primitives" painted landscapes 
164 



Landscape Painting 165 

purely for their own beauty and potential poetry. 
In their pictures the landscape was a subordina- 
tion, usually; often an abomination. The Giot- 
tesques, Perugino, Raphael, the Van Eycks, 
Memling, and others used the landscape as a 
pleasing accessory, to accentuate sentiment, or 
for other reasons. Patinir, Giorgione, and espe- 
cially Titian in one of his scenes from his beloved 
Cadore, very nearly approximated the art as we 
think of it today. 

Thus landscape remained an incidental art to 
all purposes until the seventeenth century. Pous- 
sin and Lorrain made it somewhat more. They 
were the real fathers of the landscape, although 
Rubens demonstrated clearly that he possessed 
the same mastery of landscape as over other fields; 
for he painted not after the manner of men, but 
of angels, as it were. 

As we have seen, Poussin was a good observer 
of nature but his work was emotionless and his 
designs were formal. Lorrain was not only an 
intelligent observer, but a great master of light 
and air who was able to see the flowery foam of 
grass where the wind walks and leaves tracks of 
sheen. Both, however, lacked that feeling for 
"nature unadorned" which is so obvious in all 
first-rate landscapists. Just as the American, 
L. P. Dessar, often uses nature as a convenient 
peg on which to hang his sumptuous colour, so 
Nicolas Poussin used nature as a means, and 
approached her only in a conventional and unsym- 



166 Painting 

pathetic spirit. In a similar manner, but in a 
more progressive spirit, Lor rain made use of 
architecturally embellished nature as a foil for 
his sunlight and atmosphere. 

The seventeenth-century Dutchmen approached 
nature differently; that is to say, more lovingly 
and with greater understanding. Ruysdael, ever 
in quest of the picturesque, turned his heart to- 
ward wilder scenes than perhaps his eyes ever 
beheld; for he loved the steep hills, the wild rocks, 
and strange places. Hobbema wooed the spirit 
of his own land with a quiet, homely simplicity, 
but with great sympathy. He was a fascinating 
colourist, poetic in feeling, with his villages set 
in among trees "with a light road running through 
them, or a piece of stagnant water, fenced in with 
reeds or railings, carrying down to the base of his 
picture the reflections of sky and tree." Rem- 
brandt, with passionate intensity, threw his whole 
great soul into his landscapes. 

The Dutch masters, particularly those of the 
early part of the seventeenth century, were demo- 
cratic enough in artistic vision to find beauty of 
subject almost ubiquitous; and they saw ade- 
quately enough to render tone and atmosphere 
with great fidelity and with equal facility; and 
although they worked with freedom, they never 
failed to suggest accuracy and truth; their sense 
of texture was extremely delicate; and on the 
whole their influence was felt down through 
Hogarth, Chardin, Morland, Constable, and 



Landscape Painting 167 

even by the Barbizon painters of the nineteenth 
century. 

And yet these men could never quite free them- 
selves from the conventional browns which long 
custom had thrown into foliage and shadow. The 
colours of nature seemed to elude their best 
efforts. Most of the Dutchmen were masters of 
the cloudy skies of the North Sea shore. Hob- 
bema in addition was especially skilful in his 
subtle variations of foliage, with its opaque grey 
tints, cool outer edges, and warm inner masses; 
while Cuyp and Paul Potter were not only remark- 
able painters of cattle, but they were so clever 
that they gave to their animals a home and a habi- 
tation in their surroundings, — made them integral 
and therefore plausible parts of the landscape. 

An interesting technical detail, which it may be 
well to notice in passing, was observed by Burnet 
and Murray {Landscape Painting in Oil Colours) : 

Cuyp seems to have used a great deal of varnish 
with his oil, hence the crisp sharp edge of his clouds, 
which, though bathed in the light of the setting sun, 
still possess form and distinctness ; and though finished 
with the greatest tenderness, the softener never seems 
to have been in his hand. This sweetness is produced 
by repeated scumbling, which is going over the whole, 
when the several paintings are dry, with lighter tints 
mixed with white, whereas what is termed glazing is 
the use of transparent colours without white ; and this 
it is that gives his skies that luminous, unsteady ap- 
pearance, as if every particle of atmosphere was filled 



1 68 Painting 

with the rays of the setting sun; even his darkest 
clouds seem to have been subjected to this treatment; 
hence their aerial property. 

The Dutch marine artists were nautical in 
feeling — painters of seafaring life — rather than 
elemental lovers of the sea. Van de Capelle, 
Simon de Vlieger, and Van de Velde, for example, 
rendered with excellent feeling fleets of sailing 
craft of all kinds as they played their part in the 
life of the sea, — ships that veer in the tide and 
tack with the wind. On the other hand, Vernet, 
the Frenchman, although bound by many classi- 
cist traditions, yet was lured by elemental storms 
of sea and air while unable to render them with 
cataracts of passion. The splendid furies of 
nature were not yet understood in relation to art. 
Watteau, as a landscapist, was a beautiful anom- 
aly. Although his landscapes are subjective 
and fanciful, they are nevertheless so objective 
by suggestion that they seem real. Yet many of 
them are as delicate as traceries made of air 
against the moon's pale shield. 

Turning now to England, in the early part of 
the eighteenth century, landscape art flowed 
in two directions: one stream toward exactness, 
with colours as dry as old miseries, as exempli- 
fied by the work of Samuel Scott; the other 
toward a modified classicism, as shown by the 
work of Richard Wilson; and Wilson was so 
good an imitator of Lorrain that he almost 



Landscape Painting 169 

rivalled him with soft colours wherein the soul 
abides. 

Thomas Gainsborough marked an advanced 
step, and his genius is a connecting link between 
the old and the new style exemplified by Constable. 
In colouring, Gainsborough was still conventional, 
although he added pleasing qualities to his general 
scheme of grey, brown, and gold; but his composi- 
tional arrangements were free from the older set 
rules, liberating harmonies which tell of winds 
and waters and the ineffable smile of twilights 
cool. He discovered in the English countryside 
a charm of poetic peace that needed no classic 
embellishment ; and he was not given to botanizing. 
He was moving toward but never reached the 
ideals of Constable. 

Old Crome, as he is called, was at the head of 
the Norwich school, composed of such men as 
Ladbroke, Stark, Vincent, and Cotman. There 
is a marked relationship between this group and 
the Dutch landscapists — so much so that Crome 
has been called the English Ruysdael. One of 
the distinguishing features of this band lies in the 
fact that although they followed the colouring of 
the old masters, they pursued the modern method 
of seeking inspiration and subjects directly from 
nature's marshalled gloom and living light. 

"When all of genius that can perish dies," the 
memory of John Constable will still live. He was 
the inspiration and the prototype of the 1830 
movement in France; indeed, he was the great 



170 Painting 

leavening spirit of landscape art. He caught 
spring's earliest lights, the sallow glow of summer, 
and autumn's red beneath wild winds. It was 
he who interpreted with profound sympathy and 
understanding the meaning of field and wood and 
the changing moods of weather. He saw the 
dank greens in grassy places, the movement of 
sparkling leaves under wooing breezes, the storm- 
lashed boughs; he heard Nature's groanings under 
stress, and her caressing laughter at lighter mo- 
ments; and he translated these into the terms of 
his art. 

That wonderful group of French painters, 
known as the Barbizon school, saw in Constable's 
interpretation and love of nature a worthy ex- 
ample to be followed. About 1830 they rebelled 
against the prevailing tendency of painting and 
sought to express the poetry of nature regardless 
of such fetish subjects as classic, heroic, and roman- 
tic. They strove for emotional expression and they 
found great beauty in the simpler truths. They 
put twinkling lights amidst the rocks, flower- wise, 
and let autumn's colours drip from the trees like 
rain. Theodore Rousseau was at the head of 
this school, which was composed of Troyon, Dupre, 
Jacque, Daubigny, Diaz, Corot, Millet, and others. 

Rousseau was a kind of impersonal demiurge, 
engaged with form and structure. Diaz was in- 
clined to be romantic. Troyon and Jacque were 
master cattleists. Millet caught the sad spirit 
of the labouring fields which he personified in his 



Landscape Painting 171 

peasant figures, tempting one to exclaim with 
Goldsmith: "By the living jingo, they are all a 
muck of sweat!" Millet was the strongest of the 
neo-synthesists. While the poet-painter, Corot, 
—a real stoic of the woods, — hailed lovingly the 
misty advent of morn; he peopled the reluctant 
twilight, as no one else has done, with music and 
fragrant dreams, while through the sparkling 
leaves there seem to rise the voices of amorous 
flowers. 

Turner, in his turn, was the spiritual link be- 
tween Lorrain and the French impressionists. 
Transcending the technical and imaginative powers 
of his artistic progenitor in light and colour, he 
still clung, especially in his early career, to heroic 
traditions; and yet in his later work of softened 
outlines and more vibrant atmosphere he avoided 
the realism of Monet, and remained always the 
splendid idealist, a trifle visionary possibly, but 
ever glorious in his imagination. His later work 
was influenced by his visit to Italy. Forms grew 
less real and more suggestive under an atmosphere 
more vibrant with colour and light. Among his 
kind, he ranks as the noblest sun-worshipper of 
them all. But the really great man, of course, 
reminds us of no one else. 

The French impressionists proceeded to attack 
by a scientific method the problems which Turner 
had mastered by the force of his genius. Through 
a study of the laws of optics and colours as revealed 
by Helmholtz and Chevreul, and of the spectral 



172 Painting 

analysis, these men shaped their technic ; and by the 
employment of the "primary" colours juxtaposed 
on their canvases sought to blend their vibrations 
in the beholding eye, and thus to increase the 
illusion of luminosity, the purity and powers of 
their pigments. In the technic of the best men, 
such as Monet and Manet and some others, they 
succeeded admirably, and even produced looming 
bastions fringed with fire. 

The first as well as one of the greatest impres- 
sionists was Hals. Few men have ever surpassed 
him in the suggestive manipulation of pigments. 
Velasquez must also be rated as one of the great 
impressionists. In some of his work the truest of 
form and the finest of local colour are made to 
vibrate in loosely combined touches. His technic 
neither sacrificed depth nor slighted solidity, for 
his fidelity to nature was constant. This is "im- 
pressionism" in its highest form. It can be 
achieved only through the mastery of light as it 
plays about objects in dancing tones and changing 
hues always veiling and revealing in turn the 
definite edge, and yet ever perfectly suggesting 
truth to the eye. Scale has nothing to do with 
this, but the mastery of light and the understand- 
ing of shade, with all their delicate and almost 
infinite gradations, have all to do with it. Many 
of these gradations are as elusive as the most 
subtle tints of the opal. 

It appears therefore that impressionism was 
practised by artists in the seventeenth century; 



Landscape Painting 173 

and consequently it is two hundred years older 
than it is usually considered to be. It was born 
long before it was named, and it had grown up 
before it was explained. 

Everything that affects human consciousness 
does so through point-of-view, or the way of look- 
ing at things. Pleasure may be transmuted into 
positive pain by an idea or an emotion. Liberties 
taken with the dignity or otherwise in the personal 
domain of a sensitive being may readily become 
the cruelest of torture or the blissful acme of hap- 
piness inexpressible. The martyr broken on the 
wheel may be ecstatic, while a sliver in the thumb 
of a Sybarite may cause engrossing pain. This is 
the working of a law everywhere evident in the 
spiritual world ; and if the human being is anything 
besides a brute, he is spiritual — that is to say 
spiritually conscious. 

We find this law pervading everything that 
touches the consciousness of man. In the sense 
of duration, for instance, it upsets all our measure- 
ments of time, or establishes a super-standard of 
measurement which takes no cognizance of time 
as it is mechanically divided or mathematically 
stated. As old and as varied as folk-lore are the 
expressions: "time flies" (when we are happy) 
and "time drags" (when we are miserable). Self- 
consciousness determines by its sense of well-being 
or of ill-being the velocity of duration. 

In art the same thing happens. We see accord- 
ing to our consciousness. If we are conscious of 



174 Painting 

our surroundings as separate and successive ob- 
jects, we see them one by one as we visualize each 
in turn. If we are conscious of our environment 
as a whole unified by relationship, our field of 
vision is encompassed by a glance, that is to say, 
it is envisaged en masse. If we are more conscious 
of one object than of others in the field of vision, 
that object becomes the point of focus, leaving all 
other objects less and less distinct as they fall 
away from the focus, according to the principles 
of optics. If consciousness be dulled or if it 
be stupid, our visualization is ox-eyed — we see 
everything and nothing. If consciousness be 
over-exhilarated and ecstatic or hysteric, as it 
were, we visualize as in a dream and we interpret 
in the terms of phantasmagoria. 

In the art of painting, the manner of seeing is 
all-important. Perhaps one manner is as legiti- 
mate as any other; but by whichever manner 
one sees, by that manner should one paint. The 
purpose of the painter should be to represent what 
he sees as he sees it. 

It would seem that the conscious soul is still 
enough of a stranger to its environment to make 
it advisable to view surrounding objects with the 
purpose of becoming better acquainted with them. 
This is the most common manner of looking at 
nature; and in obedience to the analytical re- 
quirements of this manner, we examine different 
objects more or less successively and in detail. 
Likewise in painting, we find this to be the most 



Landscape Painting 175 

usual method of procedure. Next comes the 
treatment of objects in the field of vision with the 
group-effect; and next, the treatment of one cen- 
tral object around which all others cluster in grada- 
tion growing more and more indistinct. These 
are the three usual methods of seeing things and 
of painting them. There remains one other 
method to consider which has rarely been success- 
ful. It is followed by artists, such as Blake and 
El Greco, who visualize as in a dream and who 
paint in the terms of phantasmagoria. The field 
of this method is not inviting; and the painters 
who have cultivated it have not produced very 
good crops. 

It will be seen by the foregoing that impres- 
sionism has as fine a basis for its being and as 
respectable a place in the evolution of the art of 
painting as any other style has or could have. It 
is the logical and therefore the inevitable method 
of rendering that which one sees as one sees it 
normally. The next step of advance perhaps in 
method is marked by the Tonalists. 



CHAPTER XVIII 

TONALISM AND TONALISTS 1 

A SOUND method is the basis of sane workman- 
ship ; this is one of the secrets of the Tonalist's 
success. There are many others which may be 
read, by any one who chances to be familiar with 
the language of painting. One of these secrets 
is honest industry; another is logical effort which 
is naturally followed by congruity of effect. The 
resulting pictures are as noteworthy for their con- 
sistency as for their beauty — terms which in a 
sense are interchangeable. 

A regard for unity and sanity of arrangement 
is, of course, not inherent in any method; but it 
finds expression rather through what has been 
aptly called the personal equation. The same 
personal equation that expresses itself sanely is 
very likely to make use of the most efficient means. 
This is the principal reason, I believe, why the 
true Tonalist is not easily diverted by quirks of 
technic. His fidelity to common-sense will not 
be shaken by passing fads. One may look in 
vain over his representative canvases for signs of 

'Art-Talks with Ranger. 

I 7 6 



Tonalism and Tonalists 177 

emotional conflict or lack of judicial poise; in a 
word, for jumbled elements. The tranquil and 
the impetuous, the sober and the gay, are all there, 
and each will be found in its own place. 

The skilful artist — the first-rate craftsman — 
leaves none of his effects to the caprice of chance. 
He can drive the technical and the theoretical 
steeds of his car side by side, as it were, or in 
tandem, without entangling them in the traces 
of his art. Many a man, not without cleverness, 
has been undone in attempting this feat. The 
cause of disaster can usually be traced to lack 
of taste or a faulty knowledge of the principles 
involved. 

The painter's keen eye for beauty should not 
have an exaggerated "blind spot" for the personal 
imperfections which mar the development of an 
impersonal art. Whether the essential character- 
istics of a painter are a birth-gift, or whether, as 
Reynolds says, "Excellence is never granted to 
man, but as the reward of labour," is of no impor- 
tance so long as his work reveals the qualities 
required by art. 

All those who are familiar with the finest ex- 
amples of the Tonal school must be impressed 
with their sensuous swing and play of broken 
colours, which are wedded to such delightful 
designs and pleasing patterns that they neither 
seem like designs nor yet suggest patterns. So 
agreeably are all the parts connected that they are 
seen only together : fused in a nice relation to the 



1 78 Painting 

whole. Thus is the appearance of labour dis- 
pelled from the picture, not by the clumsy means 
of obscuration, but by the deft methods of har- 
mony, so cunningly wrought that the production 
is as free from the moans of labour, as the gently 
swaying boughs of a tree or the happy waters of 
a lazy brook. Only through such freedom from 
petty artifice, — such dignity of poise and healthy 
temperament, — may nature's lyric beauty be 
caught and imprisoned in thin layers of colour. 

The pictures which have survived the ceaseless 
"revolutions" in art, and have held their own 
under the merciless scrutiny and severe appraisals 
of time, are, almost to a canvas, those which in 
varying degree meet the requirements of the Tonal 
method of painting. These noble specimens dis- 
close a mastery of the relations which assemble 
and unify all the components of a picture into a 
single broad harmony. Thus the masters, work- 
ing independently from nature, were able to 
produce pictures which bear none of the marks of 
uncertainty so common to the work of men of less 
keen observation and of less sound knowledge. 

It is reasonable to infer that the judgment of 
the masters, ancient and modern, had the solid 
foundation of a clear analytical mentality, and 
that it was supported by long and patient industry. 
It is evident from their work, that these men so 
trained the visual memory that it could be trusted 
to give rein to the imagination, without fear of a 
runaway or the danger of collision with fact. For 



Tonalism and Tonalists 179 

the powers of perception must be disciplined to 
the point where enthusiasm can play no pranks 
with the realism of things worth while in art. 
Briefly, all the strong Tonalists of whom we have 
knowledge were so efficient in what Sir Joshua 
says "is properly called the Language of Art," 
that the subtleties of aesthetic expression and the 
finer shades of sensuous meaning were effective 
tools in their grasp. Learning first the use of 
these, they found no difficulty in liberating the 
poetic energy which has recorded itself on their 
remarkable canvases. 

The Tonalist understands the basic principles 
of his art, — principles of which the often popular 
and always ephemeral faddists are childishly 
ignorant. He seems to know that the coloured 
body-light of a painting slightly broken by the 
colourless surface-light produces an effect which 
is more pleasing to the eye than either body-light 
or surface-light broken merely by its own diversity 
or varying intensity. This effect he achieves by 
texture to which there is no short cut; but when 
once mastered, it handsomely rewards the work- 
man for the labour patiently spent in its cause. 
It endows his canvas lavishly with all sorts of 
riches: in one place there dreams the suggestion 
of a velvet emerald, in another that of a pigeon- 
blood ruby, and somewhere between the two 
nestles the mellowed translucency of mutton-fat 
jade ; in seeming abandon, the souls of happy jewels 
are scattered with such consummate skill that it 



180 Painting 

is hard sometimes to believe that they are made 
of paint. 

The Tonalist must be clever enough to learn 
early in his career that a scientific process is neces- 
sary to the best and most durable effects in art. 
The process, it is true, may be acquired by acci- 
dent or through study ; and the method may com- 
bine empiricism with feeling, or the mechanical 
application in the work may be wholly unconsci- 
ous of the scientific principles involved; and, if 
the laws be not broken, their judgment will be 
as benign as a cloudless summer sky. 

The most satisfactory results in painting, how- 
ever, are those most uniformly reliable, because 
capable of being foreseen; and they depend upon 
the scientific accuracy of knowledge governing 
the divers stages of the work. Many artists affect 
to believe, and others, sincere in their ignorance, 
contend that scientific knowledge interferes with 
the artistic spontaneity shown in the result. In 
the light of the few things we know, if we know 
anything, the belief is unfounded in fact, as has 
been proved repeatedly in the experiences of well- 
known painters; and the contention falls to the 
ground for the lack of reasonable support. Surely, 
the art of painting involves such a narrow range 
and application of scientific principles that a 
working knowledge of them is not likely to inter- 
fere either with feeling or "inspiration." A scien- 
tific technic ought to be more easily acquired than 
one evolved from blind groping and, as it can be 



Tonalism and Tonalists 181 

converted as quickly as any other into "second 
nature," there can be no valid objection to it. 

It is readily demonstrable that the Tonalist's 
method of using glazes accounts for much of the 
colour charm of the tone-picture. For example, 
when he overlays an opaque colour with a thin 
stratum, semi-transparent and suitably tinted, 
he makes use of one of the rich properties of stained 
glass. The light from without must pass twice 
through the tinted plate, and as it issues, by re- 
flection, a discordant part of the white light is 
neutralized. That is to say, the glaze destroys a 
part of the white light by converting some rays 
into heat, while those rays which remain uncon- 
verted into heat emerge as coloured, and are truly 
sanctified in their purity, adding a tone of beauty 
impossible to any other known process. 

In this method two colours must be married, 
and considered together. The phenomenon in its 
practical relations must be apprehended, since a 
part of one colour is changed into heat, and there- 
fore lost as a colour-value, while the part which 
is conserved in its purity becomes intensified in 
effect. Certain problems of contrast aside, the 
two colours usually studied in their mutual rela- 
tions in this respect are called complementary. 
Thus if green is destroyed, the red remains purer, 
and vice versa. 1 The same phenomenon is ob- 
served with such couples as blue and golden yellow, 
green-yellow and violet, red and blue-green, scarlet 

^Letters to a Painter, Ostwald. 



182 Painting 

red and greenish cyan, sap green and purple 
magenta, orange red and bluish cyan, and so forth 
with a great number of others. Hence, since 
any part of the total, resulting in white light, may 
be removed and its complementary colour left, a 
means lies within reach of any painter whereby he 
can purify, intensify, and give tone to his colours 
that no other method permits. Thus, there is 
possible with this technic, the illusion of depth 
and luminosity which is relatively impossible with 
others. 

Of course, there is no hard and sharp line sepa- 
rating the sheep from the goats. There are strong 
men whose work, if not strictly Tonal, still contains 
some Tonal qualities — just as there are Tonalists 
who stray beyond the technical limits of the purely 
scientific principles of their method. It may be 
observed, however, that he who violates the laws 
of his art does so at an inevitable loss to the excel- 
lence of his work. This retribution, unlike the 
judgments administered by man, is meted out in 
the exact degree of his transgression, and is, there- 
fore, always just. 

There are many painters who decry academic 
methods and instruction; but when their objec- 
tions are sifted, it appears that the academy teaches 
nothing and has nothing to teach that can possibly 
harm any student with individuality and the 
mentality which is capable of appropriating nur- 
ture. Temperament, intuition, and feeling are 
useful and very practical mental assets in art; 



Tonalism and Tonalists 183 

but scientific knowledge, I repeat, is indispensable 
to the highest achievements in the possibilities 
of art. As a rule, academic training only hurts 
those who have been incurably hurt previously 
in the inscrutable machinations of Fate, — that is 
to say those who lack some of the essentials of a 
true artist. 

Better than the votaries of any other school 
known to me, the Tonalist catches the laughter of 
shimmering light, and transmutes it into pictorial 
joy; he speaks admirably the old mother-tongue 
of cloud, tree, pool, and stone; he interprets the 
spring ; he is summer's scribe, page to the majesty 
of autumn, and priest to the whole round year. 
With a simple palette, and as if by magic, he ex- 
presses breadth, teasing transparency, mysterious 
distances, the illusion of luminosity — in a word, 
the drama of air, light, and colour. Taken all in 
all, his pictures challenge, please, and convince. 
As a last refinement, he permeates them with his 
own individuality, and thus may he be called a 
creator. 

The Tonal landscapist of today does not belong 
to the class of modern painters who have to sit 
down and wait for inspiration to come tapping at 
the door ; he is always inspired with that sure attri- 
bute of genius which is a combination of industry, 
imagination, and judgment. And through all his 
works are woven the elements of a sane courage, a 
subdued splendour, and a veiled glory which vibrate 
with the sincerity and freedom of air and light. 



1 84 Painting 

Some of his pictures are lyric raptures which 
arise wholly from present joy in the contemplation 
of natural beauty. His dramatic landscapes 
arouse an emotional intensity fed by the tragic 
associations of human experience; and there are 
others which thrill, as it were, with the epic faith 
of man in his own splendid destiny. In the aspect 
of some may be found heroism, toil, and suffering; 
again there appears a grim triumph amounting 
almost to savage joy; and in still others there is 
something which arouses the supreme rapture as 
it corresponds to life's aspirations just before their 
inevitable, periodic recoil — which in art is one 
phase of rhythm. 

Naturally, there is no rigid division between 
these different aspects of the Tonalist's art as re- 
vealed in the diverse emotions aroused by his 
pictures. The unity is so perfect that one glides 
into another as insensibly as morning into noon, 
and finds itself, or differentiates itself from the 
others, only through emphasis, or rather, let me 
say, in the aesthetic personality of the beholder. 
For not unlike Shakespeare, this modern technical 
and spiritual brother of the old masters gives 
unto each according as each one hath soul with 
which to receive. 



CHAPTER XIX 

MODERN PAINTING 

ENGLISH painting was dominated by foreign 
influences until the time of Hogarth. There 
was no dearth of native talent but rather a pre- 
ponderance of foreign. Holbein was first in point 
of time and mastery. As Court painter, he set 
the pace and style which influenced his contem- 
poraries and successors for a generation of por- 
traiture, especially in miniature. 

Van Dyck, as Court painter to Charles I., put 
his stamp upon the art down through the eight- 
eenth century. His influence may be said to have 
been dominant, although it was slightly modified 
by that of Lely and of Kneller. Other succeeding 
men had their followers, such as Moro, Mierevelt, 
Rigaud, Largilliere, and Canaletto ; but their work 
made no lasting impression. Even such capable 
painters as Dobson, Walker, and Scott added 
nothing notable to the art of painting, which was 
tongue-tied by stately aristocracy. 

Then came Hogarth, the first British painter 
to interpose any original ideas; or, at least, the 
first who was strong enough to impress them on 
185 



1 86 Painting 

painting. The most striking quality of his work 
was its democratic strength; the next was a puri- 
tanical power of satire ; and next, an element which 
may be called moral sermonizing. And while he 
chose his subjects outside the realm of art, he 
handled them with great artistic cleverness and 
effect. That he had powers beyond those of story- 
telling and of preaching is evident in the brush- 
work, colour, and composition of some of his 
pictures, wherein there is shown a pure joy of 
beauty. In the words of Burnet: 

The works of Hogarth have created a class of Paint- 
ing new to Art, and raised the inferior walks of the 
English School, by teaching the capability of their 
being ennobled by the infusion of moral and poetical 
embellishments. Notwithstanding his works are 
faulty in many necessary adjuncts of painting, his 
forms harsh and angular, his draperies fluttering and 
ungraceful, his perspective unpleasant in choice; yet, 
with all these defects, an Englishman points to Hogarth 
as a proof of the genius of his country. 

That statement, we must remember, was made 
some time ago. 

During the second half of the eighteenth century, 
a great English school of portraiture arose with 
Gainsborough at its head. Reynolds and Raeburn 
were the two other most distinguished members of 
this group. Gainsborough upheld the aristocratic 
traditions with his portrayal of elegance, refine- 
ment, and of overdressed individuals of society. 



Modern Painting 187 

His technic was masterful, and his colour-schemes 
pleasing. His artistic kinship with Van Dyck is 
obvious ; it is shown particularly in the Blue Boy _ 
which he painted, by the way, to demonstrate the 
possibility of making blue "the dominating colour 
of a successful scheme." This, Reynolds had said 
could not be done. 

Reynolds, on the other hand, advocated the 
democratic traditions also with success. In his 
way, he had made a close study of the old masters ; 
and his knowledge of the art of the past enabled 
him to arrange his designs, style, and colour ac- 
cording to well established canons. He was almost 
too much of a stickler for the "Grand Style"; 
and he went often enough to such masters as 
Tintoretto, Titian, Correggio, and Michael Angelo 
for inspiration. Unknown to himself, his great 
forte was not so much the painting of "histories" 
in noble design and colour as of portraits ; an occu- 
pation which he regarded as the merest drudgery. 
When Goldsmith wrote of 

A flattering painter, who made it his care 

To draw men as they ought to be, not as they are, 

he may have referred to his friend Reynolds. 
Just the same, Reynolds knew that the likeness of a 
portrait consists more in the general air than in an 
exact representation of every feature. And there 
is every reason to believe that his portraits were 
superb. 



1 88 Painting 

Although he was ambitious to shine as a great 
student, and succeeded in becoming a wise com- 
mentator, he seemed to lack the scientific method 
in his experimental work. Nevertheless, he was 
an intellectual man and a painter blessed with 
many excellent qualities. In the lines of Emerson : 

Born for success he seemed, 

With grace to win, with heart to hold, 

With shining gifts that took all eyes. 

As a painter of portraits no one will now deny 
his mastery; but many believe that his want of 
scientific knowledge, together with his proneness to 
experimentation, have been damaging to the dur- 
ability of his work. But there is another side to 
the question. 

In Art-Talks with Ranger, a vigorous protest is 
made against the ignorant methods of the ruthless 
restorers of paintings. John Burnet, early in the 
nineteenth century, utters a similar protest; he 
says: 

A numerous class of men have risen up in this coun- 
try [England], and indeed in all countries where the 
pictures by old masters are in demand, who, though 
unable either to draw or to paint, assume a knowledge 
superior to the artists whose province it is to produce 
tints, and tones of colour of a corresponding quality. 
It is in vain to tell these men that "deep-toned bright- 
ness is produced only by repeated glazings, and that 
these glazings are composed of little more than var- 
nish and transparent colour." Many deny that such 



Modern Painting 189 

a thing as glazing existed, and consequently in remov- 
ing what they consider "dirt and varnish," they re- 
move every particle of richness of tint. What spirits 
will not reach, they follow into every crevice with the 
point of a lancet, until the picture becomes not fresh 
and bright as it is termed, but raw and crude in the 
highest degree; ... no works have suffered more 
in this respect than his own [Sir Joshua's], many of 
which are cleaned down to the preparation for glazing, 
and when pointed out as examples of this destructive 
course, it is impudently asserted that his colours 
have fled. 

In technic and colour, Reynolds is quite opposite 
to Gainsborough, whose touches were thin and 
whose colours were cool and musical. Reynolds' 
scheme inclines to be hot and his sumptuous colours 
are laid on thickly. 

George Romney has been rated with Gains- 
borough and Reynolds, whom he equalled solely 
in technical skill but whom he hardly approached 
in sense of beauty. As an artist-painter, however, 
he fell far below them in "the power of thought, 
the magic of the mind" ; for painting is one of the 
literatures of thought. 

Raeburn, long neglected, is now recognized as 
the greatest Scottish master. Some of his paint- 
ings haunt the memory as eagles the air. He was 
a good colourist, virile in his brush-work, broad 
and strong. Coates, Opie, and Hoppner were 
also painters of considerable power and of many 
excellent qualities. Sir Thomas Lawrence was the 



190 Painting 

connecting link between this brilliant period of 
English painting and the later academic slump 
into monotony and sloth which, as Jerrold says, 
would almost vulgarize the day of judgment 
itself. 

Landscape painting made marvellous strides 
during the bright period. Constable, whose pic- 
tures were as fragrant as the South, was, as I have 
said, the prototype of the Barbizon masters, as 
Turner was of the French impressionists. The 
general taste in art, however, was at a low ebb. 
Landseer, despite all criticism, rose to some emi- 
nence as an animal painter. And David Wilkie 
was a decided master of pigments, although the 
effect of his work was marred by small precisions 
and distracting details. Sir David began by 
imitating the qualities of Teniers; and his aspira- 
tions never carried him much higher than the level 
of the Dutch "small masters." Although he re- 
ferred all things to nature, and achieved much 
skill in the manner of Ostade's glazings, his efforts 
never attained the colours and qualities of Rem- 
brandt, whom he imitated late in his career. He 
did, however, acquire some admirable qualities, 
such as the successful massing of light and shade 
and the handling of composition. 

William Blake was a kind of El Greco in English 
environment — another isolated anomaly in art — 
a lone mystic who painted more by faith than by 
sight. Still, in art every man must bear his own 
burden; and that man is lost, according to Ephe- 



Modern Painting 191 

sians, who is "carried about with every wind of 
doctrine." Blake had lucid intervals. 

In 1848, English painting had reached its low- 
water mark. Then arose the famous Brotherhood 
of Pre-Raphaelites who went back to the methods 
of the Italian Primitives. The leading spirits of 
the Brotherhood were Rossetti, Millais, and Hol- 
man Hunt; and their great champion was Ruskin. 
These men cast the academic formulas to the 
winds and approached Nature honestly but too 
precisely for art. Some of their work is as radiant 
as the rivers of the skies. In their passion for 
microscopic truth, however, they often lost the 
macroscopic spirit. These men seemed to forget 
that Nature is broad and that Art must so repre- 
sent her. But they did substitute for the usual 
trivial subjects of their time the larger subjects of 
romance and poetry. This was commendable. 
The Brotherhood was a storm-breeder, and of 
short life; although its influence has persisted in 
the face of more vigorous ideals in art. 

In France, painting reflected social conditions 
more accurately, perhaps, than elsewhere. Fol- 
lowing the collapse of Court influence, which on 
the whole had been lascivious and vicious in its 
effects on art, came an epoch glorious, blood-red, 
sweet "with dust of battle and deaths of kings." 
Then arose in art a cold classicism of which Louis 
David stood at the head. This man, who was a 
child of the Revolution, became Court painter to 
Napoleon, and originated the "Empire" or Neo- 



192 Painting 

Greek style: a style, as it were, rather "too wan 
for blushing, too warm for white." 

With the brilliant campaigns of Napoleon came 
such painters of battle-scenes as Gros and Girard. 
After the Restoration the intellectual life of France 
flowed again in strong and often contending cur- 
rents. Ingres was at the head of the Classicist 
school which harked back to the antique and which 
put its trust in perfect draughtmanship ; while 
Delacroix, a great colourist of fine imagination, 
was at the head of the Romanticists. Battles 
raged between the two groups and their respective 
followers. This state of affairs was succeeded by 
the Barbizon revolt which flowed with the grace 
of waves that hold sunlight and sealight beneath 
their crests. Then arose the plein-airists, and 
at their front Bastien- Lepage, and finally the 
Impressionists with their dust of gold, of pearl and 
purple and of amber. And the Impressionists, 
as represented by such men as Monet and Manet 
and Degas, were in many respects more nearly in 
the right artistic road than has been generally 
admitted by their critics. 

Impressionism, for instance, sought beauty of 
character even though it should lose form. It 
taught a new vision whereby even in mean and 
common things may be seen an element of attrac- 
tiveness, if not of beauty; and their colours were 
as if purged with flame of all dross. This school 
suppressed details which did not augment the 
impression desired. It summarized as Nature 



Modern Painting 193 

summarizes, and it lost outlines as Nature loses 
them in distance and shadow. Certainly the 
Impressionists surpassed the Academicians in 
action and emotive values. Where the academic 
painter froze his figure into a lifeless crystal of 
beautiful draughtsmanship, the Impressionist, 
through accent and suppression, instilled an inten- 
sity of living action. Thus the figures of Manet 
and Degas have caught a moving-picture quality 
which is very effective, even if open to much ra- 
tional criticism. On the other hand, Impression- 
ism is very prone to degeneration into ridiculous 
caricature in the hands of mediocre painters. 
But what form of art is not? Still, Impressionism 
has introduced a potent factor into modern paint- 
ing both in Europe and America. Its four great- 
est modern masters are conceded to be Monet, 
Manet, Degas, and Whistler; and all four have 
been very good fighters. 

The Academic school continued to flourish in 
France during the nineteenth century as revealed 
in the work of such accomplished painters as 
Meissonier, Bouguereau, Delaroche, Fleury, Ge- 
rome, and others almost as well known. A certain 
sub-group of this school, called Orientalists, went 
to the East for their subjects, colour, and general 
picturesque sumptuousness. Among these were 
Decamps, Fromentin, Marilhat, Gerome. The 
most noted decorative wall-painters were P. de 
Chavannes and Besnard; and finally, among the 
so-called Intimists, Le Sidaner was first. 
13 



194 Painting 

In these days the tendency of painting is more 
and more away from academic methods and effects, 
while the heart of the public still timidly clings to 
the traditions of the Academy. I do not question 
the judgment of the painters as to art; but their 
attitude often reminds me of what Macaulay 
said of the Puritan who hated bear-baiting, not 
because it gave pain to the bear, but because it 
gave pleasure to the spectators. 



CHAPTER XX 

THE SECRET OF STAINED GLASS 

STAINED glass of the thirteenth century has 
rarely been equalled for some of its fine 
qualities, and probably never surpassed. What 
the old masters learned from the workers in 
stained glass is mere conjecture. There was a 
time when stained-glass work was entirely in the 
hands of the glaziers. It was then little more than 
a mosaic structure composed of gemlike bits of 
coloured glass. Early in the evolution of the art 
the skill of the painter was required. Gradually 
the glazier became a mere assistant to the stained 
glass window-maker. 

At first, the painter was called in to embellish, 
or perhaps to work up, the details of design which 
could not be done in lead. For the glazier's first 
mistake in art was to attempt the impossible. He 
forsook the fertile field of design for coloured il- 
lustrations. He tried to tell a story, whereas he 
would have done better if he had fixed his efforts 
on the glory of pattern. Splendid decorative 
effects were within his reach; but draped figures 
195 



196 Painting 

and many other pictorial ambitions were beyond 
the glazier's art. This is where the painter's art 
became necessary, first, to supplement and, finally, 
to dominate, if not to supplant, the glazier's. 

In the beginning it is probable that the painter 
used principally opaque colours, and that his 
problems were mainly of form and definition. 
His pigments were composed of metallic oxides 
mixed with finely powdered glass held together 
by some medium convenient to the hog-hair 
brush. The colours were applied to the glass and 
fused to its surface in a kiln. It is significant, 
however, that some of the Early Gothic glass was 
also treated with thin colours. It is fair to assume 
that this was done for a purpose; and that the 
purpose could be none other than to tint the glass, 
and thus add to its purity of tone in the general 
colour effect. 

In the latter part of the thirteenth century, the 
Gothic design had become modified. Modelling 
was required, and new demands were made upon 
the technic of the cathedral window-maker. 
Stippling and cross-hatching were practised. High 
lights were generally brought out by rubbing 
through the matt or by scratching it with sharp- 
pointed sticks. This process persisted through 
the Middle Gothic period: approximately the 
fourteenth century. Even two centuries later 
the Swiss glass-painter used needle points in get- 
ting his lights, just as the etcher does for bringing 
out his dark lines. 



The Secret of Stained Glass 197 

Before the sixteenth century, the colour effects 
were pretty generally produced by qualities in 
the glass itself. Where the colour was too deep, 
as in ruby glass, a colourless "pot-metal" was 
fused on, which was then ground down sufficiently 
thin to admit the desired amount of light. High- 
light effects were often produced by grinding away 
the coloured layer. Thus it was practicable to 
get red on white or white on red glass. This led 
to the pot-metal reinforcing of different coloured 
glass, and to various pleasing effects obtained by 
abrading the surfaces. In addition to the fine 
qualities thus obtained, it was discovered early 
in the fourteenth century that glass could be 
stained yellow with a solution of silver under heat. 
The workers in this art then had means of getting 
red and yellow upon white glass, green on grey- 
blue, and yellow on blue or ruby. The yellow, 
ranging from pale straw colour to deep orange, 
was purely a stain applied to the abraded surfaces 
and attained by fire without recourse to pot : metal 
or enamel. These stains were remarkably pure 
in quality. The "white" glass was greatly im- 
proved, so that the technic of the stained-glass 
artisan had become relatively mobile and power- 
ful. The "silvery white and golden" character- 
istics of later Gothic windows had their origin 
about that time. 

Early in the sixteenth century, the most pleas- 
ing qualities of stained glass began to be sacrificed 
to facility of technic. The colour was sought in 



198 Painting 

enamel rather than in the glass itself. This 
marked the beginning of the end which came two 
centuries later in a compete degradation of the 
art. The colours produced by enamel were im- 
perfect at best; they were often damaged by the 
process of firing; and they lacked all the rich 
charm and durability of the older glass. The 
enamel necessarily had to fuse at a lower tempera- 
ture than that which would warp the glass. Con- 
sequently, the index of contraction and expansion 
of the two materials differed ; the result being that 
the enamel easily crumbled and flaked off the 
glass under the attacks of time and the weather. 

On the other hand, the very elements which 
ruined the stained glass dating from the latter part 
of the Renaissance period have by their assaults 
only enriched and glorified the earlier glass. Its 
very imperfections and impurities have added to 
its mystery of tone and charm of texture. The 
irregular surface-erosions, owing to its lack of 
homogeneity, and to the presence of air bubbles 
and chemical impurities, have increased its power 
of refraction. The innumerable little surface pits, 
scooped out by the fairy fingers of wind and 
weather, have gathered an impalpable powder of 
blown dust, — all which adds to the tone some 
mellow glory, the secret of which we have been 
unable to lure from the heart or to wrench from 
the hand of time. 

Those who know somewhat of the technics of 
the old masters and the stained-glass workers of 



The Secret of Stained Glass 199 

the best periods of the art of each must be struck 
with an obvious relationship which existed be- 
tween them. The secret of this relationship 
dances in the phenomena of thwarted and resisted 
light and in the principles of colour when it is 
purified by opposing media arranged in layers, 
balanced by juxtaposition, supplemented by happy 
arrangement, and hallowed by a harmony which 
broods over the emotions of man until they detach 
themselves from his flesh and seem capable of 
dwelling apart from the material world. This, 
so far as is known to the contrary, is all there is 
in the fable of the Lost Secret of Stained Glass. 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE SECRET OF THE OLD MASTERS 

THE secret of the old masters is that they had 
none, as someone has said of the Free 
Masons. So far as the old masters are concerned, 
it is probably true that they had no secrets un- 
known to the modern masters. The belief that 
they had is a myth which has long been popular 
with painters. It reached the height of its absurd- 
ity during the middle of the eighteenth century. 
Even today, some well-known colourists are seek- 
ing the "lost secret" as assiduously as Sir Joshua 
Reynolds did, and as other men have searched 
for the Philosopher's Stone and the Fountain of 
Youth. 

This myth arose from certain marked successes 
of some of the older men, and parallel failures of 
many of the younger. The old masters put into 
their pictures superb qualities which have long 
attracted the attention of the art world ; but more 
particularly, the permanency of their colour is in 
striking contrast with the comparatively ephemeral 
results of the majority of the more recent painters. 

The poor workman blames his tools; and those 



The Secret of the Old Masters 201 

who do not succeed find fault with chance. Thus 
failure is always a breeder of excuses; inefficiency 
is an immemorial explainer. But tools are not 
like cards when the hand is dealt by hazard; and 
the making of pigments is not a lost art, but one 
that has grown enormously since the fourteenth 
century; and the making of pigments into paints 
has never before been equalled for its scientific 
accuracy. The "secret," therefore, could not 
have been pigmental; and it is very unlikely that 
the old masters employed any medium unknown 
to modern research. What may be likened to a 
secret, perhaps, was in their application of the very 
materials which have been within reach of painters 
since their time, and the possibilities of which 
have been no secret to the student, whether artist 
or layman. 

T. H. Fielding, in 1846, said: "We cannot see 
any valid reason why a painting in oil might not 
be so wrought as to preserve its tints in as great a 
state of purity, or very nearly so, as when first 
executed." That is the opinion of the best paint- 
ers today. 

A relatively small number of painters, commonly 
called "Old Masters," who worked between the 
fourteenth and seventeenth centuries, produced 
pictures of many excellent qualities and of remark- 
able permanency of colour. If these pictures had 
been the result merely of secret methods, colours, 
and media, there would have been thousands of 
masterpieces where there were only hundreds. 



202 Painting 

If these works depended upon secrets, the secrets 
were too widely contemporaneous to have been of 
the entailed order: from father to son, or from 
master to pupil. They could hardly have been 
guild-secrets since the tendency of the guild-secret 
was to "leak out," and consequently where there 
was one old master there would have been many. 
Paradoxical though it may be, the very small num- 
ber of old masters amongst all the thousands of 
painters of their time makes it probable that 
their work did not depend upon a secret. Again, 
if there had been a secret order or any kind of 
esoteric organic pact among artists for the protec- 
tion of their professional secrets, it is very unlikely 
that it should have vanished so utterly that not 
even a tradition of it remained. Especially is 
this true of a period not very remote and of an 
art the continuity of which has not been broken. 
The enlightened members of mankind no longer 
regard as mysterious anything in the painter's 
art; indeed, few others are better understood by 
the lay student. It is a very simple art judged 
by the many simpletons in it, but mainly because 
its mechanical and scientific problems are few. 
And yet it is a very difficult art because its most 
telling factor is emotive. No hint, or shadow of 
one, has been discovered in the art that indicates 
a raison d'etre for any profound secret upon which 
a masterpiece depends. Moreover, the fact that 
masterpieces have been painted by artists who 
have disclaimed any such secret would quite do 



The Secret of the Old Masters 203 

away with its necessity and weaken its probability 
almost to nothing. 

It is reasonable, therefore, to infer that the 
only secrets of the old masters were merely studio- 
formulae more than less empirical. In the slow 
development of an age-long art, many short-cuts 
in technic were discovered. Some were the results 
of accident; some arose from the unconscious 
method at work and revealed when "the thing feels 
right"; a few were born of thought, that is to say, 
formulated by the study of natural phenomena 
and reduced to a science ; such as the laws of optics, 
the relations of light and shade, the chemistry of 
pigments, and the relations of colours; and, most 
important of all, the psychology which harmon- 
izes the subjective conception of a thing with its 
objective appearance and its representation in 
counterfeit media of restricted chromatic scale, 
and in only two dimensions, or on a flat surface. 

These problems must have been studied, since 
some of them were firmly grasped by the old 
masters. Power over these problems was most 
likely obtained through a variety of methods, the 
chief of which presumably were careful observa- 
tion, close comparison, and honest labour intel- 
ligently directed. For, according to Burnet and 
Murray, "an artist ... is something like a 
butterfly — he must be a grub, and even a cater- 
pillar, for a length of time, before he is able to 
mount into the regions of air and light." 

Thus technic gradually took on tangibility. 



204 Painting 

In general, not to speak of its varieties, it became 
the easiest, because the surest and safest, road 
to the approximate end desired. The knowledge 
which was slowly acquired accumulated in studios, 
passed through generations, and crystallized into 
precepts and formulas. The secret of the formula 
counted for little; but the emotive character of 
the painter who applied the formula made all the 
difference between a masterpiece and an inferior 
work ; and the intelligence with which the formula 
was used mechanically made all the difference 
between permanency and ephemerality of the 
painting. 

That particular emotive characteristic which 
enables a painter to produce a masterpiece cannot 
be transferred to another in a recipe, however 
secretly confided or sacredly guarded. It burns, 
as it were, only in the wick of the master; and it 
may be likened to the flame of a candle which can 
be passed to another candle, but which cannot 
ignite a pastille of clay. The secret of the master- 
piece is a prisoner of the soul of the master. His 
only means of liberating it is in his work. He has 
no other key to the door and the prisoner will not 
accept freedom through the window. And thus 
it is truly that the prisoner is more powerful than 
the master, who at best serves for a little time as 
the keeper, never rising to a higher station than 
that of an amanuensis to some inscrutable power 
more impelling than his own will. 

The painter's means hardly permit him to 



The Secret of the Old Masters 205 

approximate nature. The colours on his palette 
are very different from those of the solar spectrum. 
A real artist frankly admits his limitations; he is 
forced to rely on abstract suggestion rather more 
than on concrete representation. A successful 
painting achieves through skilful drawing a clear 
mental symbol of something in nature. Well- 
selected colours applied in careful relationship 
not only increase the probability of the fiction, 
but add an emotional value to the illusion. The 
representation is constructed of form, that is to 
say, of light and shade and of colour. These are 
the basic factors of a painting. Pictorial illusion 
embraces more and goes farther. Refinements 
of colour, broken and properly adjusted, outstrip 
the primitive-symbolic, or the simply represen- 
tative, element and invade the emotional realm 
of the mind. Balance, contrast, and supplement- 
ary qualities in tone, colour, vibration, and design 
or pattern increase the picture's sway and power 
over the emotions to a pitch which may be called 
poetic and in which there are many degrees. At 
this point it is no longer a painting ; it has become 
something more; we call it a masterpiece. It has 
succeeded in creating an infinite number of subtle 
links attaching it to a world of concepts wherein 
latent longings are aroused, secret dreams called 
forth, and aspirations are born anew. 

Of the essential qualities in a masterpiece, 
durability is one of the least, if indeed it may be 
included at all. Permanency is desirable; but at 



206 Painting 

most it is only relative. Thousands of superb 
paintings have perished like burning flax because 
the master did not possess, or did not choose to 
apply, the knowledge in his technic which an in- 
ferior workman might easily have acquired. No 
one at this time, whose opinion is worth while, 
will deny that a technic developed by the "scienti- 
fic method" is less likely to produce an ephemeral 
work than a technic, however brilliant and dashing, 
which is the result of a haphazard method. 

The integrity and permanency of colour in so 
many of the old masterpieces may be reasonably 
accounted for without recourse to hypothetical 
secrets. In the first place, the old masters, for 
the most part, mixed only compatible colours. 
Their palettes were simple, containing eight or 
nine pigments at the outside. It is manifestly 
easier to avoid the disaster of an incompatible 
mixture where only a few colours are used than 
where as many as two hundred or more are avail- 
able, as there happen to be at the present time. 
In the palette of the old masters, however, sim- 
ple as it was, there were incompatible pigments. 
Yellow ochre, white and madder lake have long 
been used in making "flesh colour." But when 
the yellow earth is mixed with the vegetal lake, 
the two pigments so act upon each other chemi- 
cally that the resultant colour soon degenerates 
from a "bright flesh" to "a sickly, pale, ghastly 
mud colour." Owing to this reaction, the two 
pigments are chemically incompatible and there- 



The Secret of the Old Masters 207 

fore they become so chromatically . Yet when they 
are used together by such masters as the Italian 
and Flemish and, notably, by Hals, their paintings 
even today show no appreciable degradation of 
colour. 

The reason why these colours hold up so well 
through the centuries is found in the method of 
their application, that is to say, in glazing. The 
warring pigments were put on separately ; and one 
layer was allowed to dry before another was super- 
posed. Indeed this method was often used even 
with pigments that were known to be compatible. 
Each layer of colour was locked up in a medium 
which was resinous in the beginning or which later 
became so through oxidation. In this way the 
incompatible pigments were protected from one 
another and from the atmospheric gases by the 
different strata of medium and by the enveloping 
material in which all the particles were imbedded. 
Not only were the pigments thus protected from 
harm and chemical hurt, but they were at the 
same time enhanced in colour value by a well- 
known principle in optics whereby discordant rays 
of light are "screened off" and, as mentioned 
elsewhere, converted into heat. In order, then, 
to understand how the Italian, Flemish, and Dutch 
old masters achieved certain fine qualities in 
their work, it is only necessary to study the glaze 
and to consider its possibilities. 

An exaggerated illustration of the glaze may be 
made with white paper and a piece of coloured 



208 Painting 

glass. The deeper intensity of colour seen when 
the glass rests on the paper than when it is held 
up to the eye, is obvious and easily explained: 
When the glass lies on the paper, the light must 
pass through the glass to reach the paper. The 
light, to reach the eye, must now be reflected from 
the paper and pass a second time through the 
glass. Whereas, when the glass is held before 
the eye some distance away from the paper, the 
light passes only once through the glass, on its 
way from the paper to the eye. In this position 
of glass and paper, the light has half the saturation 
of colour that it receives when the glass lies flat 
upon the paper. In other words, the intensity 
of colour produced by light passing twice through 
the tinted glass is equal to that produced by a 
plate of glass doubled in thickness. 

A glaze, therefore, is merely any tinted trans- 
parent coat laid on a ground of any colour. The 
ground or body colour reflects only the light which 
it has not absorbed. A glaze permits the body 
colour to pass through and subtracts only such 
colour as it absorbs. For obvious reasons, the 
old master used white as a bottom layer. The 
slight refractive power of the glaze offers little 
resistance to light which is reflected from the 
white ground. The more transparent the glaze, 
the lower the index of refraction. An increase of 
colouring matter in the medium used for the glaze 
raises its refractive index, and, properly selected 
and apportioned, it enriches the body light. By 



The Secret of the Old Masters 209 

• 
following the same principle, the painter has at 
hand a sweet method of cooling his body colours 
by the addition of white. On the contrary, madder 
red, for instance, produces a warm glaze, which 
when mixed with white leans toward the violet. 

A little experimentation with the glaze discovers 
a means of producing many beautiful effects 
otherwise impossible to paints. And when it is 
admitted that the aesthetic value of a painting de- 
pends on its pleasing effect on the eye and its 
power over the emotions, — moreover, that its 
commercial value is affected by its durability, — 
the possibilities of the glaze at once become 
important. As Cicero says: "How many things 
do painters (pictores) see, whether in shadows or 
in the highest lights which are not seen by us ! " 

It is impossible to get the purity and beauty of 
pigments applied solidly and directly that shim- 
mer from two similar colours when one is used as 
a glaze. Take an opaque red — Venetian, Indian, 
or vermilion — as a ground colour and glaze it 
with madder lake. The result approximates the 
spectrum. The white in the ground surface is 
coloured red by the glaze and the red light issues 
forth in all its purity, depth, and brilliancy. The 
same general law applies to other colours. Effects 
vary according to the colours used. An opaque 
ground glazed with a different colour slightly 
increases the complexity of the process, which, 
however, is simple enough if it be remembered 
that the glaze acts as a screen in sifting its 
14 



210 Painting 

complementary colour from the transmitted light 
as it passes through. Thus it will be found that 
alizarine destroys principally green, and that 
mineral or Prussian blue absorbs reddish yellow, 
and so on. The opaque ground colour reflects 
its own colour while absorbing its complementary. 
As colour is a phenomenon of etheric vibration 
in which the wave-length is a determining factor, 
the length of wave permitted to pass through the 
glaze determines its colour value. The glaze, 
then, permits only certain colours to pass through 
it; and the opaque ground colour beneath reflects 
only such colours as are not complementary to it. 
These reflected colours, in passing outward through 
the glaze, are again screened, with the result that 
the range of colour is reduced, while the white 
light is destroyed as light and converted into heat. 
It follows that if the opaque ground colour is 
glazed with a colour which approaches it in the 
spectrum, more light will be reflected, and it will 
be of greater purity and brilliancy of colour than 
would result if the colours chosen were farther 
apart. For the farther apart the colours are in 
the spectral series, the less light will be reflected, 
and, therefore, the darker must be the effect. 
For example : shades of red and orange, yellow and 
green, blue and violet, used as ground colour and 
glaze, add to the brilliancy and purity of the effect. 
On the other hand, black may be intensified by 
glazing it alternately with such complementary 
colours as indigo or mineral blue and burnt sienna 



The Secret of the Old Masters 211 

or alizarine. Indeed the best way perhaps to 
produce a black effect, where it is required in a 
painting, is by the filter process: a glaze which 
causes interference with the waves of light which 
produce colour. The technical advantage of this 
method over the absorption process lies in the fact 
that no pigment has been found that is perfect in 
its properties of absorption. Another effective 
means may be had in the reflection method. 
That is to say, the reflection of light from the 
surfaces of very thin layers of glaze. Since the 
discovery of "Newton's rings" it has been known 
that colour-rays having virtually the same wave- 
length may be neutralized when reflected so that 
the crests of one series of waves fall into the hollows 
of the other. 

By following these laws beautiful effects may be 
had in producing the illusion of limpid water, of 
sunlight streaming through stained-glass windows 
or green leaves, and of the fiery hues of an autumn 
scene. Thus the skilful glazer possesses a magic 
over his colours which like so many nimble and 
airy servitors trip on his canvas at command, so 
that if he paints water, foam is amber, if gravel, 
it is gold. 

The old masters were aware of this general 
principle which they applied extensively, especially 
in the painting of draperies, fabrics, and garments 
when it was desired to make them more beautiful 
in colour than realistic in representation. For the 
most part, it is not likely that they understood 



212 Painting 

the laws of optics scientifically, or that they appre- 
ciated the principles involved in the refraction of 
light as related to the properties of opaque and 
transparent pigments. High and low indexes of 
refraction probably had no meaning to them in 
a scientific sense. And yet, many qualities in 
their best works show that the laws of optics were 
not violated; and that the principles of colour 
relationship, and that the properties of colours 
themselves, were not neglected. 

As I have intimated, long experience and care- 
ful observation crystallized into technic, which was 
to all purposes empirical. In this sense, the 
secret of the old masters was in the application 
of such formulae in their work as had shown the 
best practical results. Apart from this, it is more 
than probable that they had no secret, as we un- 
derstand the word used in this relation, and 
consequently it could not have been lost. 



CHAPTER XXII 

IDEALS 

ART has too many sides to be seen all at once; 
and it has so many problems that no one 
person seems capable of solving them all. Even 
the Jove-like Rodin discusses some of them at 
times as might an old demigod in his dotage. 
Then he is as illogical and contradictory as a 
coquette. For example, in his apostrophe to the 
Venus of Melos, he says : 

There are people who say to you, "the ideal." 
If this word is not void of meaning, it signifies only 
stupidity, The Ideal ! The Fantasy ! But the real- 
ities of nature surpass our most ambitious fancies. . . . 

Man is incapable of creating, of inventing. He 
can only approach nature, submissively, lovingly. . . . 

If this is Gospel, then one might reasonably 
inquire into the object of Rodin's ceaseless work. 
Why should not a cast from his beloved "nature" 
better take the place of a sculpture by this mighty 
man? If his statement is true, it would follow 
that his colossal genius should be employed in the 
selecting of models. These could be reproduced 
213 



214 Painting 

mechanically with greater accuracy than by the 
master's magic hand. It would also follow that a 
coloured photograph might be made into a finer 
picture than one of Corot's palpitating dawns 
shuddering into day. 

But he also says: "The glory of the Antique is 
in having understood Nature." That is to say, 
it is self-evident in the ancient masterpiece that 
the artist understood nature. The founder of 
idealism, Berkeley himself, could hardly claim 
more. "Thus," says Professor Perry in Present 
Philosophical Tendencies, "while the burden of 
idealism is a religious interpretation of nature, its 
cardinal principle is a theory of knowledge. For 
the purposes of technical philosophy it consists 
in a single proposition, to the effect that knowledge 
is an originating or creative process. ..." 

A little farther along, Rodin is by turns rhap- 
sodic, emphatic, illuminative, vague. It would 
be difficult for any idealist to excel him in 
this: 

O Venus of Melos, the prodigious sculptor that 
fashioned you knew how to make the thrill of that 
generous nature flow in you, the thrill of life itself — 
O Venus, arch of the triumph of life, bridge of truth, 
circle of grace ! . . . 

The generative profile of that torso helps us to 
understand, reveals to us the proportions of the world. 
And the miracle is in this, that the assembled profiles, 
in the sense of depth, of length, and of width, express, 
by an incomprehensible magic, the human soul and 



Ideals 215 

its passions, and the character that shapes the heart 
of beings. 

The ancients have obtained by a minimum of ges- 
ture, by their modelling, both the individual character 
and the grace borrowed from grandeur that relates 
the human form to the forms of universal life. The 
modelling of the human being has with them all the 
beauty of the curved line of flowers. And the profiles 
are secure, ample like those of great mountains; it is 
architecture. Above all, they are simple; they are 
calm like the serpents of Apollo. . . . 

Left to themselves the ignorant see only the ap- 
parent details of things; the source of expression, the 
synthesis alone eloquent, escapes them. . . . 

In the synthesis of the work of art, the arms, the 
legs, count only when they meet in accordance with 
the planes that associate them in a same effect, and 
it is thus in nature, who cares not for our analytical 
descriptions. The great artists proceed as nature 
composes and not as anatomy decrees. They never 
sculpture any muscle, any nerve, any bone for itself; 
it is the whole at which they aim, and which they 
express; it is by large planes that their work vibrates 
in the light or enters into the shadow. . . . 

Sublime pride of marble! Tranquil life of the 
soul of the body! Nature is an uninterrupted 
harmony. . . . 

That face has the variety and the liberty of a flower, 
and the artist, leaning attentively over it, rises as one 
vowed to religion ; he has heard Venus speak. . . . 

... mouth so simple, so natural, so generous! 
It holds thousands of kisses ! . . . 

The soul of shapes breathes in the profound life of 
this thrilling body. I see her magnificent armature 



216 Painting 

of bones as I see her thoughts — all her grace hidden 
and present, how powerfully organized! In this form 
sweet as honey, where the eye surprises neither blacks 
nor violent lights, but where life flows without jerks 
or starts, clear as live water, one feels keenly the resist- 
ance of a resolute and powerful frame ! Supported by 
these bases that will not weaken, sure of their solidity, 
the flesh bounds with joy as if it would escape the 
redoubled shadows deepening under the breasts, that 
they may rise from the torso, whence glowing light 
would seem to emanate. . . . 

The shadows, the divine play of shadows on antique 
marbles! One might say that the shadows love 
masterpieces. They hang upon them, they make for 
them adornment. I find only among the Gothics 
and with Rembrandt such orchestras of shadows. 
They surround beauty with mystery ; they pour peace 
over us, and allow us to hear without trouble that 
eloquence of the flesh that ripens and amplifies the 
spirit. That eloquence darts on us the truth, diffuse 
as light. It is the radiancy of gladness. What secret 
emotion invades me before the meditated grace of 
this design! Ineffable passages of light into shadow! 
Inexpressible splendours of half-tones! Nests of 
love ! What marvels that have not yet a name in this 
sacred body! Venus Genetrix! Venus Victorum! 
O total glory of grace and of genius ! 

Admiration overtakes me like sleep. The Venus 
of Melos is reflected by all the others; in them is 
accentuated one or another of her infinite beauties. 

In this one, free of all draperies, the modelling of 
the shadows makes the flesh breathe even more 
voluptuously; that thigh, column of life, is literally 
quivering. . . . 



Ideals 217 

The upper part of the body inclines in a gesture of 
reverence ; movement how gracious ! where the Gothic 
and the Renaissance find their symbol. 

And again this one, what instinct bends it into an 
arc of grace ! A single curve made of all those, of the 
shoulders, of the legs, designs the kneeling Venus. . . . 

Badly proportioned the results are truly blasphe- 
mies against nature. They no longer have eloquence, 
and breed only harshness and meagreness. From a 
distance, moreover, measure yields the most powerful 
results. The Venus of Melos in particular owes to 
this moderation her power of effect. There is nothing 
abrupt. Approaching her step by step, one imagines 
that she has been gradually modelled by the continuous 
effort of the sea. 

Is this not what the ancients wished to say in 
affirming that Aphrodite was born of the womb of the 
waters ? 

And yet Rodin imagines, or affects to believe, 
that he is a realist. The discerning world does 
not behold him as such, neither shall time so 
regard him, for he is one of the supreme idealists 
of all the ages, to whom art is "wine and honey, 
balm and leaven." He is so much like Nature's 
self that age cannot wither him, nor custom stale 
his infinite variety. 

The same broad principles apply equally to 
sculpture and painting. In fact, art is spiritually 
homogeneous. It is concerned with that which 
being beautiful bears intellectual and emotional 
relationships which are broadly humane and 
pleasant, and therefore idealistic. In the words 



218 Painting 

of C. Grant La Farge: "It is a recent thing that 
separates the arts, that makes us think of painting 
and sculpture as isolated objects." 

Art viewed sympathetically is observed to be a 
phenomenon concomitant with the higher orderly 
development of human ideals wherein intellectual 
processes are associated with the nobler emo- 
tions. Thus art created by man reacts upon 
his soul to make it better, finer, and more 
capable, more altruistic, in a word, more ideally 
humane. 

And therefore are the great artists the powerful 
instruments of civilization; their work not only 
reflects the spirit of the times but thrills it with a 
new life, and opens the eyes of the soul to the 
wonders and beauty of an ideal world. And thus 
are the great artists the benefactors, the blessed 
philanthropists of mankind. They quicken the 
human being with reverence so that they who were 
blind are made to see. A lordly pleasure house 
has been built for the soul. 

No one can behold understandingly a superb 
work of art without adding at the same time some- 
thing to that human attribute which for short we 
call the soul. And any art which mars the soul, 
or which detracts from the humanity which is in 
us, is not art, but diabolism masked with artifice. 
Unfortunately, this diabolism has always been 
too evident among the freakish, pandering horde 
of pseudo-artists and twisted art-fanatics. It is 
a subjective disease, however, rather than an 



Ideals 219 

objective error in art itself. The fault is in the 
lover, not in his mistress. 

A well-known English archaeologist is reported 
to have said: "In case of fire it would be better to 
allow a live baby to burn than a Dresden Madonna. 
If the dreadful choice were forced upon me, I 
should certainly save the Dresden Madonna 
first. One can get another baby any day." 

If the gentleman is correctly quoted, he pays 
no tribute to art, and certainly none to himself. 
Of course, .one is not to be blamed for the mis- 
fortune of having spiritually ingrowing toe-nails 
and outgrowing claws; but to expose a deformity 
with a chuckle is to add bad manners to bad luck. 
Why an interest in art predisposes the aesthetic 
invert to parade his moral obliquity might be a 
good theme for an essay on one of the obscure 
branches of pathology. 

To a normal being, art has no purpose and less 
value when purchased by selfishness and preserved 
by cruelty. Self-abnegation, smothered hope, de- 
spoiled dreams, ceaseless toil, and secret tears, — 
these are the soil from which great art springs; 
and the real lovers of art savour of this soil. True 
nobility, in one form or another, has been associ- 
ated with the triumph of art through all the ages. 
Love, Hope, and Sorrow! these are the materials 
with which the masters have made their dreams 
of art ; or they may be likened to spirits who guide 
the pencil of the painter, the pen of the poet, and 
the chisel of the sculptor. Art and Nature are 



220 Painting 

twin gods who strangely sacrifice the individual 
to preserve the instinct — which should give us 
somewhat of a jolting hint. 

The sophistry of one being able to "get another 
baby any day" is almost too low for words. That 
one babe may be put into the cradle of another is 
as true as that one picture may take the place of 
another on the wall; but with that, all truth and 
decency end, and elaboration would be repulsive. 
So far as the difficulties of mere duplication are 
concerned, it would be infinitely easier to dupli- 
cate a destroyed Dresden Madonna than a burned 
babe. In the first place, it requires something 
higher than a jackass to father a child; and 
in the second, the human soul is never dupli- 
cated; neither can one child ever take the place 
of another. The thought of sacrificing the mean- 
est human being for even the noblest work 
of art never entered a sane mind south of the 
Rhine. 

Pierre Loti, in deprecating our fancied loss of 
ideals, wails: "Alas! we have come to value bread 
more than Art." Loti may be forgiven much 
because he is himself an artist who has laboured 
and brought forth. His wail, however, suggests 
another side to the question of ideals. Metaphor- 
ically, he values, as we all do, art above bread. 
And yet actually and very properly the world has 
always prized bread above art, and it always will 
so long as man retains his animal body. Seriously 
to thrust art into the lists with bread is an abnor- 



Ideals 221 

mal, if not a crazy, thought. The things are farther 
apart than the poles. 

One of the devolutionary influences opposed to 
the ideals of art is the noisome fanatic. When he 
turns critic he becomes a public nuisance. I be- 
lieve it was Laurence Sterne who said: "Of all the 
cants which are canted in this canting world, 
though the cant of hypocrites may be the worst, 
the cant of criticism is the most tormenting." 
The most casual dunce assumes that he is capable 
of criticizing almost anything in art, while as a 
matter of fact few things are more difficult. Of 
course, the usual obstacle to exact writing on art 
is an unruly imagination, since it is prone to take 
liberties with any subject; another pinch to climb, 
possibly even more common, is an ignorance of 
the limitations of the particular art discussed. 
Painting, as any other branch, has its boundaries 
beyond which it cannot go. It cannot hope to 
justify the acrobatic feats of a romantic imagina- 
tion in a wild state. Writers on art, since Pliny 
and before, have suffered from these two faults: 
too much imagination and too little knowledge. 
Job understood this when he said: "He multiplieth 
words without knowledge." 

A painting, for instance, which is given credit 
for various qualities which are dissimilar in their 
nature or conflicting in effect, is not as highly 
praised as the critic may fancy. A work of art 
that contains one superb quality may contain 
many other qualities which support the one; but 



222 Painting 

it is loading it rather heavily to give it several 
principal qualities, which, even if compatible, 
are apt to neutralize or at least to weaken one 
another. Nature must obey necessity. 

Art as a sociological phenomenon is only affected 
in a large sense by the permanence of sociological 
conditions; these upbuild, uphold, and finally 
depress the organization of a State. As the con- 
ditions of a State change, that which is favourable 
to its well-being slowly rises to a maximum and 
then gradually declines. In a word, the State is 
subject to the laws of adaptability and to the 
pressure of environment. Art is observed to move 
in a parallel manner, although its time-scale need 
not coincide with that of the State, since the prin- 
ciples of art are too universal to yield much to the 
local pressure called patriotism, or to suffer dis- 
integration necessarily with the State's death. 
Nevertheless, when a State declines until a revo- 
lution intervenes between the old and new govern- 
ments, its art enters into eclipse. 

But there is always this difference between the 
life-changes of art and those of the State : the evolu- 
tion of the State seems to require abrupt changes, 
such as revolutions or inter-State war, in order 
to form new species, while art passes on in a rhyth- 
mic course through periods of light and shadow, 
and while maintaining an unbroken continuity, 
it is able to transform itself into new species, at 
the same time retaining its old instincts. 

Whenever the golden glow of wealth shifts from 



Ideals 223 

one part of the world to another, the forsaken area 
is enveloped by what is logically called a "dark 
age." This is precisely what happened to West- 
ern Europe when the commerce of the later Roman 
Empire was directed eastward, and its wealth 
shifted to the Levant. But a dark age does not 
mean that art perishes and that all the other 
fruits of progress wither. Many good results of 
civilization persist even under the most unfavour- 
able conditions because the ideals of man were not 
born to die. 

In 1 914, we were well started in an astonishing 
age. Science was playing a part new to the dreams 
of mankind. The powers of synthesis were grad- 
ually catching up to those of analysis. The in- 
ventive faculty had grown into a racial tendency, 
gathering terrific momentum and subjecting us 
to daily surprises which were bewildering. A 
new spirit seemingly had entered the world unless 
some old spirit had disguised itself mightily. 
And this new, or veiled, spirit was prying into 
things from every conceivable angle of inquiry, 
and with means and methods most subtle, with 
instruments delicate, ingenious, and ponderous. 
Speculative science was obsessed by the puzzling 
quest of truth which it worshipped as a god, and 
to which practical science paid the homage of 
a singular faithfulness to fact. Art was slowly 
rising toward the ancient heights known as 
Grecian. Rodin was bringing forth miracles 
from stone; a few painters had reached the 



224 Painting 

stature of the old masters ; Mistral had only just 
passed away; Maeterlinck was writing his name 
among those of the immortals; and a unique 
character occupied a throne — by happy accident, 
or the wisdom of Fate, a great king was at the 
head of the Belgian State. 

Purl! bang! — the machinery of civilization blew 
up, or was blown up by a royal ruffian who was 
half mad. Germany reverted to barbarism and 
brutalized Austria-Hungary. A great and power- 
ful people suddenly turned bandits. All sem- 
blance of honour was thrown to the winds ; sacred 
ruins and monuments of art were ruthlessly de- 
stroyed; mercy was stamped out; human justice 
was ignored ; brutality was decorated with the iron 
cross; rape, rapine, and murder were spread over 
Europe. 

The heroic instincts of the Great Republic were 
rendered impotent by a government which was 
remarkable for its moral mountebanks, and their 
worse underlings. Governmentally, the United 
States of America remained criminally "neutral," 
and forced eighty per cent, or more of its citizens 
into a most shameful attitude toward righteousness. 
Morally, our nation was contemptible in the sight 
of mankind. Our Government wagged its tail 
complacently and seemed to believe that a neutral 
dog was better than a fighting lion. 

The ideals of art passed immediately into red 
eclipse. The aesthetic impulses of civilized Europe 
were rudely transmuted into grim determination; 



Ideals 225 

artistic energy turned into defensive channels 
already choked with blood. The British Empire 
was solidified as if by magic; Russia's idealism 
became instantly practical, gigantic, altruistic; 
France forgot her frivolous distractions and be- 
came possessed of a Spartan soul. That mar- 
vellous nation became, over-night, the splendid 
reincarnation of the Greek spirit when to be a 
Greek was better than to be a king. 

The impetuosity of this age shall not be stayed, 
but led by a new passion for truth and justice, it 
must inevitably result in new ideals as it changes 
the conditions of life and alters the trajectory of 
life's forces. We shall see old faiths with their 
fretting fears pass away for ever; the conscience 
of man will no longer be considered a safe guide 
of conduct. The dominant religion of Europe and 
America has already begun to change almost in- 
sensibly into another of which Socialism may be 
one of its stages. Feminism, more than ever be- 
fore, will be forced to the front, and compelled to 
play its brilliant part in the drama of world-life. 
A broader and better morality, interwoven with 
science, will supplant the one that has long been 
supported by faith and fear and which is rotten 
with hypocrisy. The spirit of solidarity of ideal, 
interest, and action among the toiling millions 
will cease to be only a hope, but it will become the 
most significant fact of this period. Various 
humane movements like refreshing waters will 
wash away the stains of blood and crime which 
is 



226 Painting 

now incarnadine our little valley bordered with 
mountains of shining stars. Our thirst for bigger 
and better things than War, which so long has 
known only bitter waters, will become intenser 
and finally universal. 

All this must necessarily affect art by quicken- 
ing its ideals, possibly to such an illustrious degree 
that future historians shall designate the period 
as the Vraienaissance. As we have no time-scale 
applicable to art, and no inspired Prophets, we 
cannot foretell the epoch. We only know that 
art is neither perfect nor stationary ; and we believe 
that it will not stagnate in the midst of mighty 
movement and of forward change. What it shall 
bring forth during the pregnant centuries before 
us, no living person can now predict. 

The next step to be made in the art of painting 
will probably come through the influence of 
Japanese ideals. They are already sifting slowly 
into some of the noblest work of the West, where 
it is beginning to be felt that back of all our chang- 
ing forms of matter and transitory subjects of 
art, there is something akin to a universal spirit 
or pantheistic soul. As Emerson says: 

Nature is a mutable cloud which is always and. never 
the same. 

The problem will be to express this soul, or 
phases of it, in broad generalizations guided by 
the decorative instinct, and sustained by the love 
of beauty, and enriched by exquisite emotive 



Ideals 227 

values detached from all crude and distracting 
non-essentials. Then shall the painter equal the 
poet in giving unto each according to his needs: 
according to his aesthetic capacity and scope of 
emotional experience. Then shall art avoid all 
signs of the superflux of pain, and preserve only 
the fadeless beauty of things that fade, since 

Time dissipates to shining ether the solid angularity 
of facts. 

So long as present pigments and vehicles are 
used, the masters in future, it is fair to assume, 
will be Western Tonalists in technic and Eastern 
Pantheists in ideals. Their shadows shall be 
crystalline; forms shall be clothed like summer, 
dressed in a raiment of sighs and rose leaves; 
while the aureoled heads of saints shall pass with 
other fugitive things not good to treasure. And 
then shall 

The hooded clouds, like friars, 
Tell their beads in drops of rain. 

As the balance must be preserved between art 
and science, between romanticism and realism, 
between the soft graces of fancy and the hard 
lines of fact, the painting of the future is not 
likely to fall away from idealism. The painters 
must express then as now the finer things which 
Life feels, hopes, and holds: the mind's noblest 



228 Painting 

conceptions, love's most beautiful dreams, the 
music-like harmonies of the emotions, and all the 
longing fancies, possible to their technic, that 
shall throng the spacious dome of time. 



When Professor Henry Fairfield Osborn's Men of 
the Old Stone Age: Their Environment, Life, and Art 
was published, The Philosophy of Painting was in 
press. The chapter on "Prehistoric Painting, " there- 
fore, did not have the benefit of Professor Osborn's 
masterly presentation of the art in Aurignacian times. 
The researches of the Professor and of his distinguished 
associates, however, amply justify the author's specu- 
lations as to the antiquity of painting. The facts 
correlated and set forth by this renowned authority lead 
to philosophic deductions parallel to those presented 
in this Study. 

The readers who may be interested in the most 
complete and scholarly exposition of the subject 
extant are referred to Professor Osborn's book which, 
to use his own words, has the unique distinction 
of being illustrated in part by ' ' the Upper Palaeolithic 
artists of the now extinct Cro-Magnon race. " Many 
of these designs are graceful and spirited, beautiful 
in form and colour. 

Man, we know, is an old plodder. It required a 
long time for him to learn how to walk on his hind 
legs; how to change his front feet into hands; how to 
develop a dexterity which should keep pace with 
his growing mind; and, finally, how to create an art. 



Ideals 229 

A phase of his evolution may be visualized in verse 
by adding a few lines to the five quoted from Horace 
as they appear in Professor Osborn's volume: 

"When men first crept from out earth's womb, like worms, 

"Dumb speechless creatures, scarce with human forms, 

"With nails or doubled fists they used to fight 

"For acorns or for sleeping-holes at night; 

"Clubs followed next; at last to arms they came"; 

And meanwhile longing taught them how to frame 

An intuition vague with boundary-lines; 

And then the love of mimicry entwines 

With loftier imagery, until the heart 

Of Prehistoric man sowed seeds of art 

That found congenial soil in bark and bone, 

Took root in sunless galleries of stone; 

Thenceforth a vine crept round the smiling earth 

To bear the blossoms of benignant worth. 



INDEX 



Academicians, 193 
Academic methods, 182 
Academy, the, 85 
^schylus, 88, 89 
Aetion, 98 
Aetius, 136 

Agamemnon, 83, 84, 87 
Agatharchus, 77, 88, 89 
Age, the Mycenaean, 74, 76 
Aglaophon, 77 
Agrippina, 87 
Alberti, 138 

Alexander, 91, 95, 96, 97, 100 
Alexandrian masters, 71 
Alexandrian period, 71 
Altamira, caves of, 38, 39 
Anatomy, pictorial, 12 
Anaxagoras, 69, 88 
Antiphilus, 98 
Antonines, the, no 
Apelles, 24, 68, 90, 91, 92, 93, 

95, 97. 103 
Aphrodite Anadyomene, 90 
Apollodorus, 71, 89 
Architecture, Italian, 117 
Archon, 100 
Aristides, 72, 86, 87 
Aristophanes, 80 
Aristophon, 80 
Aristotle, 71, 79, 81 
Armenian, 105 
Art, 1-5, 21 
Art, antiquity of, 41 
Art, Egyptian ideals of, 52 
Art, Gothic, 154 
Art, Greek ideals, 52, 53 
Art interpretations, 2, 3 
"Artistic temperament," 29 



Artists, Aurignacian, 24, 38 
Artists, primitive, 42 
Art-Talks, 188 
Atramentum indicum, 106 
Augustus, Emperor, 93 



Bacon, Lord, Essays, 93, 100 

Barbizon masters, 167, 190 

Barbizon revolt, 192 

Bargoria, 160 

Barry, James, 82, 96 

Bastien-Lepage, 192 

Beauty, 4, 5, 24 

Begouen, Count, 40 

Bell, Sir Charles, 122 

Bellini, Gentile, 127, 128 

Bellini, Giovanni, 127, 128, 139 

Belvedere, 13 

Benedict XI., 118 

Berger, Ernest, 139 

Berkeley, 214 

Berruguete, 95, 160 

Besnard, 193 

Blake, 175, 190, 191 

Blue Boy, The, 187 

Boileau, 86 

Botticelli, 91, 125, 126 

Boucher, Francois, 159 

Bouguereau, 193 

Bouts, 143 

Brain and hand, partnership 

of, 35 
Brancacci Chapel, 123, 126 
Breuil, 39 

Brotherhood, the, 191 
Browning, Mrs., 92 
Bruyn, 148 
Bularchus, 76, 77 



231 



232 



Index 



Bull, The Farnese, 87 
Buoninsegna, Duccio di, 120 
Burke, 125 
Burnet, 132, 186, 188 
Burnet and Murray, 203 
"Burnt City of Gold," 76 
Byron, 63 

Byzantine Empire, 62 
Byzantine influence, 113 
Byzantine traditions, 117 



Cadore, 165 

Ca?sar, 93, 107 

Calades, 98 

Calliphon, 77 

Calumny, 91 

Campari a, 160 

Canaletto, 134, 185 

Candaules, King of Lydia, 77 

Carpaccio, Vittore, 128 

Carracci, 72, 132 

Cartailhac, 39 

Carthamus tinctorius, 51 

Castillo, 95 

Catacombs, III, 112 

Celtic tribes, 109 

Ccnnini, 137, 138 

Ceraunophorus, 94 

Champsaur, F61icien, 91 

Character-studies, 100 

Chardin, 159, 166 

Charles I., 142, 185 

Charles V., 160 

Chavannes, 193 

Chevreul, 171 

Chlamys, the, ill 

Chrysocolla, 105 

Church, Mr., "famous trick" 

of, 81 
Cicero, 71, 83, 86, 92, 209 
Cimabue, 117 

Cimon of Cleonae, 70, 71, 85 
Cione, Andrea del, 119 
Cis-Rhinish ideals, 15 1 
Classic movement, 156 
Classicist School, French, 192 
Cleanthes of Corinth, 76 
Coan Venus, 92 



Coates, 189 

Cobalt, 56 

Coleridge, 164 

Colour, permanency of, 206 

Complementary colours, 181, 

182 
Conegliano, Cima da, 128 
Constable, 166, 169, 190 
Constantine, no 
Corot, 170, 171, 214 
Correggio, 93, 130, 131, 132, 

187 
Cotman, 169 
Cousin, Jean, 156 
Cowper, 12 
Craton of Sicyon, 76 
Crete, 74 

Crivelli, Carlo, 128 
Crd-Magnon, 228 
Crowe and Cavalcaselle, 123 
Cuyp, 167 



Darius, 77, 97 

Daubigny, 170 

David, Gerard, 141 

David, Louis, 191 

Davy, Sir Humphry, 104, 106 

De Arte Pingendi, 136 

De Artibus Romanorum, 137 

Decamps, 193 

Degas, 192, 193 

Delacroix, 192 

Delaroche, 193 

Democritus, 69, 88 

Dessar, L. P., 165 

Diana, temple of, 94 

Diaz, 170 

Dimensions, 16 

Dionysius of Colophon, 80 

Dioscorides, 104 

Discourses, Reynolds', 108 

Dobson, 185 

"Dombild," the, 148 

Doric column, 49 

Dorotheus, 92 

Dow, Gerard, 144 

"Dragon's blood," 104 

Drawing, origin of, 35 



Index 



233 



Dresden Madonna, 219 

Du Bartas, 162 

Dupre, 170 

Durer, 93, 148, 151, 152, 153 

Dutch marine painters, 168 

Dutch masters, 166 

Dutch "small masters," 190 

E 

Eastern pantheists, 227 
Egyptian aborigines, 47 
Egyptians' carved palettes, 

47 
Egyptians, early, 47 
Elgin marbles, 96 
El Greco, 161, 175, 190 
Emerson, 18, 68, 134, 188, 226 
Emphasis, 184 
"Empire style," the, 191 
English school, 186 
Erewhon, author of, 12 
Eumarus, 70 
Euphantes, 76 
Euphranor, 72, 85 
Eupompus, 70, 85 
Euripides, 81, 84 
Etruscan influence, 109 
Evans, Sir Arthur J., 74 



Falconet, 84 

Fielding, T. H., 201 

Filarete, 138 

Filippino, 125 

Fleury, 193 

Foucquet, Jehan, 156 

Fra Angelico, 120, 124, 125 

Fra Bartolommeo, 131 

Fragonard, 159 

Francesca, Pietro della, 126 

Francis I., 156 

Free Masons, 200 

French impressionists, 171, 190 

Fromentin, 139, 140, 193 

Fuseli, 78, 95 

Fyt, Jan, 143 



Gaddi, Taddeo, 120 
Gainsborough, 169, 186, 189 
German character, 149 
Germanicus, 87 
Ge"r6me, 193 
Giorgione, 132, 133, 165 
Giottesques, the, 165 
Giotto, 117, 118, 119, 121, 123, 

164 
Giotto's "O," 118 
Girard, 192 

Glass painters, Swiss, 196 
Glass, ruby, 197 
Glaze, the, 28, 50, 51, 53, 93, 

99, 103, 126, 158, 167, 181, 

188, 190, 207, 208, 209, 210, 

211 
Goethe, 63 
Goldsmith, 171, 187 
Gothic, the, 116 
Gothic window-making, 116 
Goya, 162, 163 
Gozzoli, 125 
"Grand style," the, 187 
Greuze, 159 
Gros, 192 
Grunewald, 148 
Guardi, Francesco, 134 



Hals, 144, 172, 207 

Helena of Crotonia, 82 

Hellenistic decline, 87, no 

Helmholtz, 171, 172 

Henry VIII., 153 

Heraclius, 137 

Herculaneum, 101 

Hercules, 85 

Herodotus, 77 

Herrera, 161 

Hieroglyphics, Egyptian, 48, 

49 

Hissarlik, 60 
Hobbema, 166, 167 
Hogarth, 166, 185, 186 
Holbein, 148, 152, 155, 185 



234 



Index 



Homer, 76, 86 
Hondekoeter, 143 
Hoppner, 189 
Horace, 229 
Houghton, Lord, 125 
Hugo, 63 

Hunt, Holman, 191 
Hysginum, 105 



Ideals, 213 

Ilium, 76 

Implements, decoration of, 43, 

44 
Implements, primitive makers 

of, 4 2 . 43 
Impressionists, 192, 193 
Ingres, 192 
Inness, 24 
Intimists, 193 
Intuition, hunger of, 44, 45 
Iphigenia, The Sacrifice of, 31, 

83,84 
Issus, the battle of, 97 
Italian masters, 123 
Italian Primitives, 191 



Jacque, 170 
Janet, 155 
Japanese ideals, 226 
Jeremiah, 33 
Jerrold, 190 
Job, 221 

Johnson, 129, 134 
Jordaens, Jacob, 142 
Junius, 68 

K 



"Kamares, " 75 
Kneller, 185 



Labyrinth, the, 74 
Ladbroke, 169 
La Farge, C. Grant, 218 
Lancret, 158 



Landscape painting, 164 

Language, 34 

Laocoon, The, 87 

Lapis lazuli, 105 

Largilliere, 185 

Late Minoan period, 75 

Latin League, the, 109 

Latins, The, 108 

Lawrence, Sir Thomas, 189 

Lebrun, Charles, 158 

Lely, 185 

Leo X., 130 

Leonardo, 125, 129, 130, 131 

Le Sidaner, 193 

Life, 7, 13, 21, 25 

Lippi, Fra Filippo, 124, 125 

Li via villa, 164 

Lochner, 148 

Loggia de' Lanzi, the, 120 

Lorenzetti, the, 120 

Lorrain, 157, 158, 165, 166, 

168, 171 
Loti, Pierre, 220 
Louis IV., 158 
Louis XV., 159 
Lucca MS., 136 
Lucien, 91 
Ludius, 164 
Lydians, 77 

M 

Mabuse, 141 

Macaulay, 193 

Maeterlinck, 224 

Magi, the, ill 

Mandroclcs, yy 

Manet, 163, 172, 192, 193 

Mantegna, 127 

Marcus Ludius, 98 

Masaccio, 123, 124 

Materials of Greek painters, 

102, 103 
Matsys, Quentin, 141 
Media, Egyptian, 56 
Media of Hellenistic painters, 

103 
Meissonier, 193 
Melanthius, 68, 85 
Memling, 140, 141, 165 



Index 



235 



Men of the Old Stone Age, 228 

Messina, Antonello da, 128 

Metier, 44 

Metzu, 144 

Mexico, The True History of 

the Conquest of, 95 
Michael Angelo, 95, 156, 187 
Michelangelo, 130 
Micon, 79 
Mierevelt, 185 
Mieris, 144 
Mignard, 158 
Millais, 191 
Millet, 170, 171 
Minerva, the temple of, 96 
Miniature, 104 
Minoan period, 74 
Minos, the palace of, 74 
Minotaur, 74 
Missals, 115 
Mistral, 224 
Modern painting, 185 
Monet, 171, 192, 193 
Morales, 160 
Morland, 166 
Moro, 185 

Mosaics, 97, in, 117 
Motif, Egyptian, 101 
Motif, Etruscan, 101 
Motif, Hellenic, 101 
Motif, persistency of, 43 
Motor habits, 44 
Movement of 1830, 169 
Murex, 105 
Murillo, 162 
Murray, 167 
Music, Greek, 67 

N 

Napoleon, 191, 192 

Neo-Greek style, 192 

Nero, 90 

Nicias, 72, 88, 97 

Nicias "set his mark," 88 

Nicomachus, 72, 86 



"Old Crome, " 169 

Old masters, secret of, 200, 201 



Oleum preciosum, 137 

Olympiad, 93d, 89 

Opie, 92, 189 

Opie's Lectures, 95 

"Orcagna," 119 

Orientalists, 193 

Orpheus, 111 

Or San Michele, 120 

Osborn, Henry Fairfield, 228 

Ostade, 190 

Ostwald, William, 139, 181 



Pacheco, 161 

Painting and Celebrated Paint- 
ers, 68 
Painting, antiquity of, 36 
Painting, dramatic, 26, 30 
Painting, early Christian, in 
Painting, early Egyptian, 47 
Painting, early Etruscan, 58 
Painting, early Greek, 61 
Painting, epic, 26, 31 
Painting, French, 154 
Painting, Greek, 63, 68 
Painting, Latin, 108 
Painting, lyric, 26, 27, 28, 29 
Painting, Northern, 136 
Painting, origin of, 33 
Painting, Pompeian, 99 
Painting, Prehistoric, 38 
Painting, Spanish, 160 
Pallium, the, in 
Palma, 133 

Pamphilus, 68, 72, 85 
Panasnus, 78 
Panathenaic games, 100 
Parrhasius, 71, 81, 82, 83, 84 
Parrot, Sir Joshua's, 81 
Parthenon, sculpture of, 89 
Pater, 158 
Patinir, 165 
Pausanias, "The Gazetteer of 

Hellas, "79 
Pausias, 72, 80, 85 
Peloponnesian palette, 90 
Perry, Professor, 214 
Perugino, 126, 165 



236 



Index 



Petrie, 48 

Petronius, IOI 

Phidias, 68, 78, 86, 96, 107 

Philip II., 160 

Philip of Macedonia, 91 

Philocles, 76 

Philosopher's Stone, 200 

Philostratus, 78 

Phoenicians, 77 

Phrygians, JJ 

Pictura Veturum, 68 

Pigments, 36 

Pigments, Egyptian, 48, 50, 

51.56 
Pigments, Greek, 103 
Pigments, primitive, 46 
Pinturicchio, 126 
Pisano, Niccola, 117 
Plato, 51 
Play, 40, 41 
Plcin-airists, 192 
Pliny, 49, 58, 70, 71, 76, 77, 79, 

81, 86, 89, 92, 94, 101, 104, 

106, 221 
Plutarch, 10, 86, 90 
Poetry, 28, 30, 32 
Point-of-vicw, 173 
Polychromy, 106 
Polygnotus, 71, 78, 79, 80, 88, 

„ I03 •• 

Pompeii, 1 01 

Pot-metal, 197 
Potter, Paul, 167 
Poussin, 87, 156, 165 
Poussin, Gaspard, 157 
Prague, the painters' guild of, 

147 
Praxiteles, 88, 98, 107 
Pre-Raphaclitcs, 191 
Present Philosophic Tendencies, 

214 
"Primitives, the" 164 
Prometheus, 85 
Protogenes, 68, 72, 90, 97 



Quasimodo, 13 
Quintilian, 79, 82, 



Raeburn, 186, 189 

Raffaelle, 87 

Raphael, 91, 126, 129, 130, 

156, 165 
Raspe, R. E., 137 
Reformation, 143 
Reinach, 148 
Rembrandt, 19, 133, 145, 190, 

216 
Resemblance, 16 
Reynolds, 92, 121, 132, 177, 

179, 186, 187, 189, 200 
Reynolds, The Discourses of Sir 

Joshua, 87 
Rigaud, 158, 185 
"Rococo," 158 
Rodin, 213, 214, 217, 223 
Ro61as, 161 

Romanesque period, 114 
Roman period, 108 
Roman Republic, no 
Romanticists, French, 192 
Romney, George, 189 
Rospigliosi, decorations of , no 
Rossetti, 191 
Rousseau, 170 
Rubens, 141, 142, 165 
Ruskin, 118, 191 
Ruysdael, 166 



Salvator Mundi, 41 
Sarto, Andrea del, 131 
Schliemann, 74, 75, 76 
Schongauer, 148 
School, Asia Minor, 77 
School, Barbizon, 170 
School, Brabant, 140 
School, Cologne, 147 
School, Dutch, 143 
School, Flemish, 141, 143 
School, Florentine, 120, 126, 

131 

School, Fontainebleau, 156 
School, Greek, 69, 85, 86 
School, Ionian, 90 
School, Italo-Flemish, 156 



Index 



237 



School, Norwich, 169 

School, Paduan, 127 

School, Peloponnesian, 70 

School, Seville, 161 

School, Sicyonic, go 

School, Sienese, 120 

School, Theban Attic, 72 

School, Thebes, 86 

School, Umbrian, 126 

Scott, Samuel, 168, 185 

Sculptors, Hellenistic, 101 

Sculpture, Greek, 67 

Scumbling, 28, 93, 167 

Seeing, 173, 174 

Shakespeare, 14 

Shepherd, the Good, in 

Signorelli, Luca, 126 

Simon de Vlieger, 168 

Sinopis, 103 

"Small masters," 144 

Snyders, Franz, 143 

Socrates, 84 

Solomon, 10 

Sophocles, 88 

Squarcione, 127 

Stained glass, 195 

Stained glass, Early Gothic, 

196 
Stained glass, Middle Gothic, 

196 
Stained glass, secret of, 194, 

199 
Stark, 169 
Steen, Jan, 144 
Sterne, Laurence, 221 
Stone age, 24 
Strassburg MS., 137 
St. Wilhelm, 151 
Symbol, 35 
Symmetry and Colour, 68, 86 



Taste, 20 

Tavern-scenes, 144 
Technic, 17, 43 
Technic, Egyptian, 50, 53 
Telephanes, 76 
Teniers, 190 
Ternberg, 144 



Texture, 179 

The Belvedere Apollo, 101 

The Contest of Ajax and 

Odysseus, 85 
The Dying Caul, 101 
The Last Judgment, 120 
Theon, 98 
Theophilus, 136 
Theophrastus, 71 
Theseus, 85 
Thessalonians, 135 
Tiepolo, 134 

Timanthes, 71, 83, 85, 87 
Tintoretto, 133, 134, 187 
Titian, 24, 133, 139, 165, 187 
Toch, Maximilian, 139 
Tonalism, 176 
Tonalists, 28, 175 
Troy of the Iliad, 75 
Troyon, 170 
Turner, 171, 190 
Tyrian dye, 105 



U 



Ucello, 124 



Van de Capelle, 168 

Van der Heist, 145 

Van der Weyden, Rogier, 140 

Van de Velde, 168 

Van Dyck, 142, 185, 187 

Van Eycks, the, 138, 139, 

141, 143, 147, 155, 165 
Van Ley den, 143 
Van Orley, Bernard, 141 
Vargas, 160 
Vasari, 130, 134, 138 
Velasquez, 133, 161, 162, 163, 

172 
Venetians, 127, 128 
Veneziano, 124 
Venus, 93 

Venus, Cnidian, 107 
Venus Genetrix, 216 
Venus of Melos, 212, 214, 215, 

216,217 
Venus Victorum, 216 



238 



Index 



Vermeer van Deft, 144 

Vernct, 168 

Veronese, 133, 134 

Vincent, 169 

Virchow, 65 

Vitruvius, 56, 104, 105, 107 

Vraienaissance, 226 

W 



War of Independence, the, 



Walker, 185 
Ii 
143 
Watteau, Antoine, 158, 168 
Wcenix, Jan, 143 
Western Roman Empire, 113 



Western Tonalists, 227 

Westropp, 103 

Whistler, 193 

White under-colouring, 81 

Wilhelm, 147 

Wilkie, Sir David, 190 

Wilson, Richard, 168 

Wordsworth, 10 

Wornum, 72, 82, 104 

Wynrich, 147 



Zeuxis, 71, 79, 80, 81, 82, 90, 

93. 103 
Zurbaran, 161 



Ji Selection from the 
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G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 

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Memories of a 
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In this volume, the author continues his 
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